Philips and Partners Make the Case for AI Ultrasound to Cut Maternal Deaths

A Devex panel featuring leaders from Philips, Aga Khan University Hospital and the University of Rwanda laid out a concrete model for scaling AI-enabled prenatal ultrasound in countries where the alternative is often no ultrasound at all. The conversation moved quickly from technology to the harder questions: workforce gaps, government policy, philanthropic funding and how to avoid the graveyard of well-intentioned pilots that never scale.

• AI-enabled ultrasound delivers results equivalent to a trained sonographer, opening prenatal screening to frontline health workers in rural Africa and South Asia
• A task-sharing pilot in Kenya trained 32 nurses who scanned 2,800 women in nine months, proving the model works at meaningful volume
• Rwanda has already rolled out ultrasound to frontline workers nationwide, with enabling government policies for referral pathways in place
• Kenya wrote a national obstetric point-of-care ultrasound policy in 2024, partly catalyzed by philanthropic partners who brought stakeholders together
• Panelists warned against "pilotitis" — effective pilots that never scale — and said technology without policy change and coalition partnerships cannot achieve impact

Why it matters: Every two minutes, a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth. In much of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, preventable conditions like prematurity, low-lying placenta and multiple pregnancies go undetected because there is simply no one trained to perform an ultrasound.