Andhra Health Minister Announces Plan to Deploy AI-based App for Neonatal Care
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The initiative will combine the “Shishu Maapan” application, developed by the Wadhwani AI Foundation, with the existing ASHA workers’ mobile application.
The Andhra Pradesh government has planned to introduce an AI-driven health monitoring system to strengthen neonatal care in the state.
Speaking at a recent meeting, Health Minister Satya Kumar Yadav announced that the state government will introduce AI-powered technology into the mobile application used by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) to monitor the health and growth parameters of newborn babies.
The initiative will be implemented through a pilot project designed to automatically assess and record health indicators of newborn babies using AI-powered smartphone-based videos.
The initiative will combine the “Shishu Maapan” application, developed by the Wadhwani AI Foundation, with the existing ASHA workers’ mobile application.
The technology is designed to enable health workers to automatically capture a newborn’s weight, height, head circumference, chest circumference, and mid-upper arm measurements from a simple mobile phone video, without physically touching the child, enabling faster and contactless neonatal assessments.
As part of a pilot initiative, around 1,000 newborns from the Mangalagiri constituency will be included in the program.
Data will be collected from the catchment areas of urban health centres in Indiranagar, Kopparao Colony, Kaza, and Yerrabalem, along with the Pedavadlapudi Primary Health Centre.
The collected videos and health measurements will be used to train the AI system and create a localised database suited to the regional physical characteristics of infants.
The Health Minister also noted that the training of ASHA workers and Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) has already begun in the pilot areas.
Based on the project’s outcomes, the AI-driven newborn monitoring system will be expanded across Andhra Pradesh.
Under existing Home-Based Newborn Care guidelines, ASHA workers are required to visit newborns six times within the first 42 days after birth and manually record various health indicators using weighing machines, infantometers, and measuring tapes.
As per the officials, the AI-based system is expected to reduce workload, improve efficiency of healthcare workers, while minimising the discomfort for infants during examinations.
The application is intended to assess growth parameters within seconds using a smartphone camera and automatically upload the information into the health monitoring system.
The system is expected to facilitate timely intervention by generating alerts to the medical officer when any potential developmental abnormalities or growth concerns are detected
Highlighting the recent initiative, Health and Family Welfare Commissioner G. Veerapandian stated the technology has demonstrated high levels of accuracy and will help strengthen newborn healthcare services by enabling early detection of developmental issues and improving access to timely medical care.
Officials have indicated that the AI integration process and data training phase are expected to take approximately three months before wider implementation begins across the state.
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