India developing AI tools for early prediction of preterm births: MoS

Ministerof State for Science & Technology, Dr Jitendra Singh on Monday said that India’s largest pregnancy cohort study of 12,000 women under the GARBH INi initiative aims to develop indigenous, AI driven solutions to prevent preterm births.

Singh at an event here, said the study supports creation of AI-based pregnancy dating models tailored for Indian populations, identification of microbiome-based predictors of preterm birth, rapid diagnostic tools, and genetic markers for early risk assessment.

Such models and solutions can improve maternal and child health outcomes in the country and tackle preterm births, one of the leading causes of neonatal mortality as well morbidity in adulthood, he added. The programme has enrolled about 12,000 pregnant women, one of South Asia’s largest pregnancy cohorts and built a repository of over 1.6 million well characterised biospecimens and over one million ultrasound images to support research.