Project Details
Title:
Omaya Care (Healthcare)
Details:
In Ghana, the days and weeks after childbirth are the most dangerous in a mother's reproductive life, yet they are the least monitored. The majority of maternal deaths occur in the postpartum period, and most happen at home, after a woman has been discharged from a facility. Complications like postpartum haemorrhage, infection, hypertension, and severe mental distress can escalate within hours, but once a mother leaves the ward she is largely on her own until a scheduled visit that many never attend. Postnatal follow-up coverage is low. Distance, transport cost, time away from work and other children, and the burden on already overstretched midwives mean a mother who is quietly deteriorating often goes unseen until it is an emergency. Facilities have no reliable, low-cost way to stay in contact with every mother they discharge, and mothers have no easy channel to flag that something feels wrong before it becomes critical. This matters because most of these deaths are preventable with timely detection and referral. The gap is not medical knowledge — it is consistent, proactive contact during the highest-risk window.
(https://ghs.gov.gh/news-and-events/ghana-records-marginal-increase-in-maternal-mortality-rate)
Omaya's core goal is to close the postpartum monitoring gap with proactive, automated voice outreach so that no mother is silently at risk after discharge. Specifically, the AI solution aims to: Place scheduled, conversational check-in calls to mothers during the high-risk weeks after birth, in a language they speak naturally. Detect warning signs — physical and mental-health symptoms — through structured conversation and a risk-scoring layer. Triage and escalate: flag at-risk mothers to the responsible clinic or midwife in real time so human follow-up happens early, not late. Reduce the manual burden on health workers by automating routine outreach, freeing them to focus on the mothers who actually need intervention. Generate structured follow-up data that helps facilities track outcomes across every mother they discharge.
Omaya is built for how Ghana actually communicates and delivers care. We lead with voice rather than a smartphone app because mobile phone penetration is near-universal while smartphone ownership, data affordability, and literacy are not — a voice call reaches a mother on a basic handset, with no app to download and no data to buy. Calls run in local languages such as Twi, meeting mothers in the language they trust for health conversations. The solution slots into existing facility and referral structures rather than replacing them: clinics keep ownership of the mother, and Omaya simply ensures consistent contact between visits and routes alerts back to the right health worker. It is designed around real constraints — overstretched midwives, limited follow-up capacity, and rural distance. Data handling is built to comply with Ghana's Data Protection Act (Act 843), with clear controller/processor roles for hospital partners.
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