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Maternal Moderate Anemia Heuristics from Smartphone Image Learning Algorithms (MAHILA)

Mohammad Sarfarazul Ambiya

Chief Data Scientist

GDHD, Geneva

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12M pregnant women in India have anemia annually

Anemia in pregnancy raises risk for maternal mortality

Anemia is reversible with iron supplementation

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Which of these two pregnant women are anemic?

Which should receive an iron transfusion?

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20 out 100 anemic patients will be missed by the WHO rapid test

(Marn, H et al Lancet 2016)

And these tests are invasive

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10 out 100 anemic patients will be missed by digital hemoglobin machines (Yadav, Neogi et al)

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And these tests are invasive

Cost $50M annually for consumables in India

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Image Processing

ResNet18

Hb < 9

Hb ≥ 9

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MAHILA: woman in Hindi, moderate anemia heuristics from image learning algorithms

Largest study for smartphone Hb classification for pregnant women in the world with 3000 participants

91-96% sensitivity

100% specificity

AUC 1

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Next Steps

  • Train and validate with 25,000 pregnant women

  • Train model for general population in community

  • Train and validate for range of smartphones

  • Publish a foundational model for anemia classification

  • Work with government and regulators for community-based scale-up

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research@khushibaby.org