MAHILA: Smartphone-Based AI Screening for Maternal Anemia Using Eye and Tongue Images

Affecting an estimated 12 million pregnant women annually in India, maternal anemia is a major contributor to adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes, yet screening at the last mile is constrained by invasive, consumable-dependent, or unreliable tools. Moderate anemia often goes undetected due to limited lab access and constraints with point-of-care devices, resulting in missed opportunities for early intervention and increased downstream health and system costs. MAHILA addresses this gap by enabling frontline workers to perform frequent, non-invasive screening using a smartphone camera, flagging higher-risk women for confirmatory testing and treatment while reducing unnecessary referrals.

Khushi Baby (KB) is a non-profit organisation working as a systems enabler to public health departments in India. Established in 2016, KB’s team of 130 members includes expertise from public health, product design, engineering, field implementation, and data science. Co-created with 250,000 hours of community health workers' engagement, KB’s solutions have been used to track the health of over 50M beneficiaries across Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. Through enabling high quality data, timely insights, and effective actions, KB aims to close the loop for the public health system at the last mile.