mumspring pregnancy app

We are committed to preventing maternal and newborn death by using technology to provide antenatal education and affordable skilled are. Studies show that women who undergo antenatal education are more likely to seek skilled care and those who seek skilled care are more likely to have a healthy baby and a healthy pregnancy.

If scaled globally, our solution could improve the outcomes of millions of at-risk pregnancies in low-income and middle-income countries, as well as indigenous communities in wealthy countries. Indigenous communities in high-income countries, have newborn death rates that are equal to low- and middle-income countries. 

In Nigeria alone, there are more than two million high-risk pregnancies every year. Studies show that regular antenatal care can reduce neonatal death and disease. However, frontline health workers in Nigeria can only provide 15 percent of antenatal care coverage. Poor antenatal care coverage contributes to 200,000 newborn deaths, 300,000 stillbirths, and 700,000 premature babies born every year.

Our solution is a mobile app that delivers customized weekly antenatal guidance and support on physiological changes, nutritional needs and mental support throughout pregnancy. 

The mumspring pregnancy app enables wellness for pregnant women and newborns by providing:

1. weekly antenatal/prenatal education and empowering women to seek antenatal care from a skilled heath worker.

2. access to a medical specialist on the app, women are able to access quality care throughout their pregnancy and after childbirth, postpartum care and pediatric support.

3. community support and journaling to promote psychological, emotional, and mental wellness during pregnancy and beyond.

Our initial target population are pregnant women in Nigeria. We connect with them through online community and in-person (prior to Covid19) engagements to understand their needs. We constantly engage with them to get feedback and deepen our insight into their needs.

Most African women are ashamed to seek help because they are not sure what they need and would rather stay quiet than admit a lack of knowledge, due to the fear of being perceived as inadequate. Our solution empowers every pregnancy with information and gives her the confidence to seek support from a health worker.

Our solution relates to two key Challenge dimensions.

• Through our mobile app, women have easy access to personalized antenatal care and education. This increases access to high-quality, affordable care for women, new mothers and newborns.
• Our community support and in-app journal helps reduce the severity of mental and emotional health issues associated with the pregnancy and post-partum period.

By ensuring pregnant women have access to high quality, affordable care and emotional support during pregnancy and after childbirth, we are ensuring that every woman, new mother and newborn can survive and thrive.

The traditional way of providing antenatal care and education is in-person inside a clinic or primary healthcare center. However, the current available frontline health workers available in Nigeria does not have the capacity to handle the volume of patients needing care.

Current frontline workers in Nigeria can only provide 15% of antenatal care coverage thus increasing the vulnerability of women and children.

With our solution, individualized care is possible using big data; targeted interventions are within reach using artificial intelligence; remote care provision is seamless from anywhere in the world using messaging (voice and text).

Essentially, We are leveraging technology to provide the capability for us to support the 85% of the population that our health system currently is not able to support due to capacity constraints.

We are combining three key technologies to enable maternal and newborn wellness.

With Big Data, we are able to determine the pregnancy stage of each woman and give her educational information that is relevant to her current pregnancy stage. We also leverage big data to track her vitals and health metrics on the app. 

Artificial intelligence enables us identify markers for depression and mental dispositions requiring urgent intervention.

Messaging and Chat technology simplifies the provision of community support and remote medical care from anywhere in the world using messaging (video and text).

Big Data is used in a variety of health management solutions to predict health needs: Big Data in Healthcare.

Artificial intelligence can dramatically improve quality of care: Technology and mental health: The role of artificial intelligence.

Mobile and video messaging are flexible tools for getting in touch with patients and monitoring their progress. By implementing a secure text or video messaging program, physicians and midwives can stay in contact with at-risk patients to ensure compliance with treatment plans and cut down the risk of complications. This is used widely in telemedicine solutions around the world.

By using the mumspring pregnancy app, all women will have access to individualized antenatal care, mental and emotional health support and access to high quality prenatal and postpartum care at an affordable cost.

In the long run our solution will give women accessible skilled Labour & Delivery care. Today, 67% of births in Nigeria are performed in the absence of a skilled birth attendant. Studies show that having a skilled birth attendant increases the chances of survival of the mother and child during childbirth.

We have served over 200 pregnant women on our mobile app. 

In one year, our plan is to get to 200,000 women.

In 5 years, we plan to serve at least 16 million women.

Over the next year, we will support 200,000 women and in Nigeria, Ghana and Canada (indigenous communities) and provide follow-on vaccination promotion to the mothers we support to we can ensure that we are fostering healthy communities.

In 5 years, we will have replicated our solution to reach 16 million women and children in at least 10 markets around the world.

The key barrier to our goals is funding. We have the ability to deliver the technology. We need funding to attract the right the talent to amplify our execution speed and enhance our scaleability.

We are applying for grants and Covid19 loans to secure funding and deliver on our goals.

full-time staff: 8

part-time staff: 3

We are a team of innovators and problem-solvers. Over the past 3 years, we have come to a deep understanding of the unique intricacies of the needs of our target population and have crafted our solution to meet those needs.

Our medical committee consists of internationally trained doctors who have a balance of local and foreign experience. We also have a vast network of doctors that enables us provide access to medical professionals from around the world.

Some of our core members are:

Abisola Oladapo-Odutola (CEO). 

Mother of 2. Software Engineer with medtech experience.

Ini Atoyebi (CTO). 

Developed the mumspring app. Over 10 years of software development experience across various sectors.

Michelle Ijomah (Product).  

Leads product development for the mumspring app.

Noel Abotti (Operations). 

Anjola Johnson (Community).

The Lagos State Government, Office of Sustainable Development Goals is piloting our solution to provide access to pregnant women in Lagos, Nigeria.

Our business model is a hybrid model. 

We support pregnant women by providing critical weekly antenatal education and also access to medical attention during pregnancy and beyond. 

Many women pay for the services in full.

To ensure access for all, our services are heavily subsidized for low-income segments (funded by donors and full-paying customers).

To fund our work in the short term, we will use a combination of sustained donations and grants, selling products or services and raising investment capital.

In the long term, our primary source of funding will be revenue generated form services and products.

Becoming a Solver means access to a supportive community of peers, funders, and experts to help advance our innovative work through Solve's nine-month program. This will be a transformational opportunity for our work.

The mentorship and strategic advice from Solve and MIT networks will help us make giant strides to reach our goals.

We need support to develop the right evaluation measures so that as we grow and scale, our impact is being reported accurately.

We would like to partner with Stanford Medicine | Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine to research ways of improving clinical outcomes for newborns in resource-limited environments.

We would like to partner with Neopenda, a Solve Member. Neopenda's wearable neonatal vital signs monitor for resource-constrained environments will enable us advance our solution by providing monitoring support for babies in Nigeria.

With our app, pregnant women, new mothers and children in refugee populations can be more resilient and self-reliant because they have access to just-in-time antenatal care and postpartum support. This will enable women seek the right kind of during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. Women can access medical professionals to help them with critical antenatal care while they integrate into their new environment.

Additionally, increased migration will increase demand for health services in the countries receiving migrants. The mumspring app can ease the transition of women into the prenatal health management system. This will reduce the pressure on health systems.

We would use this prize to enhance our solution by including a feature to provide menstrual support and reproductive health education for women and girls from age 15 - 55.

Our solution supports the health workforce for newborns, pregnant women, and new mothers in Nigeria. With the Health Workforce Innovation Prize, we will be able to provide access to training to health workers who support rural women. Additionally, the prize will enable us provide on-call mobile Labour & Delivery units. This will ensure availability of skilled care during delivery; skilled care is the most important factor to prevent newborn and maternal death during childbirth.

Our solution currently includes a journal to help women manage their emotional and mental wellness. To amplify our impact, we plan to use AI to determine women who need intervention based on identification of psychological markers developed with neurological health specialists. This will help in the treatment of depression and prevention of suicidal behavior.

Our solution supports the health workforce for newborns, pregnant women, and new mothers in Nigeria. With the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Funded Award, we will be able to provide vaccination education and accessibility to rural and low-income women during pregnancy and after childbirth. Additionally, the prize will enable us provide on-call mobile Labour & Delivery units. This will ensure to ensure availability of skilled care during delivery - skilled care is the most important factor to prevent newborn and maternal death during childbirth.