At Wekebere, we are developing technologies and services to improve birth outcomes through remote pregnancy monitoring care, early prediction, and managing pregnancy complications. We have seen many technological advances across the world, but when it comes to the field of maternal healthcare, over the past 50 years, there hasn't been much change in the way pregnancies are monitored. We've seen improvements in treatment and other interventions, but when it comes to monitoring, it requires the mother to walk into a health facility. Despite the alarming number of mothers who die every day (for example, in Uganda, we have over 16 mothers dying on a daily basis and globally we lose about 830 pregnant women daily), the technology available to them has hardly changed.
Wekebere has been able to design the future of prenatal care with technologies to help mothers and babies. We combine connected devices with data analytics to assure and empower mothers, providing them with peace of mind during the potentially stressful period of pregnancy. We have an AI-enabled device that monitors vital parameters from both the mother and the foetus. With these parameters, we are able to predict and manage complications even before they happen. We have a belt with sensors attached to it, which are able to pick up foetal heartbeat, uterine contraction and other vital information. This is then transmitted into the app, where we are able to run our AI algorithm that processes and extracts features from the information collected. This data is able to predict, analyse and determine the wellbeing of the foetus. This information is then presented to the mother through the app.
The team at Wekebere has been able to finish our clinical pilot and are soon launching into the clinical trial at Kawampe National Referral Hospital. We've recently launched a new AI model into the app which is now focusing on predicting preterm birth that we’ll be testing out in the clinical trial. Our mothers will now be able to know if they are going to be delivering at full term or not.
One of our biggest challenges is funding, especially because our product involves hardware. The invention of medical devices is highly regulated, which means the creation and testing takes much longer than a traditional startup when it comes to getting the product to market. Many investors don’t understand the medical device process because of its complexity and the regulations.
Another challenge we are currently dealing with is high costs that are related to manufacturing and the fact that we are also in a location where manufacturing facilities are not at our disposal.
It is important to be patient and resilient. Developing a medical device takes a lot of time and you will face many obstacles. You will find that at some point the technology is not working or perhaps you don’t have funding. What you need to keep at the centre is what inspired you to start the project in the first place. If you keep that at the heart of what you’re doing, it will help keep you moving.
Another point is, first find the problem that you're going to solve, and then develop a solution for it. Don't develop the technology, and then find the problem to fit your technology. Related to that is the need to have the users at the centre of development. This is very important. Don’t create something based on what you think the user wants. Bring them into the development process and continually seek out their feedback.
Wekebere's work with Villgro and AI4H has been very impactful. For example, one of the challenges we've been battling is in terms of regulations. When it comes to data protection, we are not supposed to be hosting data outside the country. With the support from AI4H, we have been able to buy our own servers, making it possible to collect and store our data so that we have more control to make it more secure and private.
Not only that, AI4H has been very supportive by providing us with technical support. For example, we've been under mentorship in various fields of AI business modelling, which has also helped to shape our business.