What is the name of your organization?
Maternal and Infant Health Equity Initiative Impact
What is the name of your solution?
MIHEI Impact
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
AI-powered maternal referral system and affordable HMO improving access, emergency response, and outcomes for underserved pregnant women.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Lagos, Nigeria
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
NGA
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
In Nigeria, one of the world’s most dangerous places to give birth, pregnant women—especially in underserved communities—face deadly delays in accessing emergency care. An estimated 82,000 Nigerian women die annually from preventable pregnancy complications due to delayed referrals, financial barriers, and inadequate healthcare access (WHO, 2023). In rural areas, 60% of deliveries are conducted by Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs), who often lack the tools to detect complications or facilitate timely referrals.
A heartbreaking illustration of this crisis occurred in Lagos, where a woman died after being denied care due to her inability to pay a ₦500,000 ($550) deposit, underscoring how financial exclusion and inefficient referral systems contribute to maternal deaths. Such cases are not isolated; they represent a systemic failure in emergency maternal care.
MIHEI addresses this crisis by targeting the root causes of maternal mortality: lack of emergency response, disconnection between TBAs and health facilities, and unaffordable care. Our solution builds a bridge—connecting frontline TBAs with hospitals through an AI-powered referral system and offering a low-cost maternal HMO, ensuring women are not left behind due to poverty or geography.
What is your solution?
MIHEI provides an AI-powered maternal referral system and a low-cost maternal HMO to reduce maternal mortality by ensuring pregnant women in underserved communities receive timely and affordable care.
Our hybrid referral tool connects Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs)—who conduct most rural deliveries—with nearby primary and secondary health facilities. The tool uses conversational AI and risk assessment protocols to help TBAs identify danger signs, make accurate referrals, and trigger real-time emergency response, including transport coordination. A manual checklist version is also available for low-tech settings.
Complementing the system is MIHEI’s Maternal HMO, which enrolls women in affordable health insurance plans covering prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care. This eliminates the financial delays that often prevent women from receiving care in emergencies.
Together, these solutions form a scalable, tech-enabled care continuum, driven by frontline community workers and powered by data. The tool has been demoed with target users, and the MVP launches in April 2025.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
MIHEI serves pregnant women in underserved and rural communities across Nigeria, where maternal mortality remains one of the highest globally. These women often rely on Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) due to cultural familiarity, proximity, and low cost, yet most TBAs lack formal training, referral protocols, or access to emergency response systems. Additionally, these women face financial barriers that delay or prevent access to hospitals, contributing to preventable complications and deaths.
Our solution transforms their experience by integrating TBAs into a structured, AI-enabled referral network, ensuring pregnant women are quickly identified, triaged, and connected to hospitals when high-risk symptoms arise. It also addresses affordability by enrolling them into a low-cost maternal HMO, eliminating the need for large upfront payments that too often cost lives.
This solution will lead to faster referrals, reduced emergency delays, and improved survival outcomes while empowering TBAs as frontline actors in maternal care. Over time, it will shift health-seeking behaviors, increase healthcare utilization, and create a more equitable maternal health system—one that ensures no woman is denied care because of where she lives or what she can afford.