How AI Is Supporting Midwives

If you only looked at the headlines, you might think AI in healthcare is about replacing humans. It is not. Not yet, anyway.

In midwifery, AI is doing something more interesting. It is becoming a tool.

The breakthroughs are happening quietly. Take ultrasounds. In the past, reading an ultrasound was part art, part science. A skilled sonographer would interpret subtle shapes and shadows, looking for things that did not look right. Now, AI models trained on thousands of images are learning to predict the gender of a baby more accurately than a human eye could.

Another advance is in monitoring fetal health. Traditionally, a midwife or doctor would use a cardiotocograph (CTG) to monitor a baby's heart rate during labor. Interpreting the results correctly requires years of experience, and even then, it is not perfect. Now, AI systems are being trained to analyze CTG data in real time, alerting midwives earlier if there are signs of distress.

There is even progress in analyzing maternity incidents. In the UK, researchers at Loughborough University developed a tool called I-SIRch that uses AI to read through thousands of maternity care reports, spotting subtle patterns in human error. Problems like communication gaps, missed handovers, and misjudged priorities. Things that, when seen early, can change outcomes.

What is striking is how unflashy all this feels. There is no big moment when AI "takes over." It is more like water seeping into cracks, quietly filling gaps where time, experience, or resources are missing.

Of course, AI has limits and is only as good as the data it was trained on. Still, if you zoom out, you see a pattern. AI is not here to replace midwives. It is here to extend them. To help them see sooner, act faster, and catch more.

It is easy to underestimate small improvements. But in healthcare, a 1 percent earlier detection rate, a 2 percent faster reaction time, or a 3 percent increase in accurate diagnosis is not just a nice-to-have. It can mean the difference between a healthy birth and a tragedy.

The future of midwifery will not look like robots delivering babies. It will look like midwives doing what they have always done, only now with a quiet partner alongside them, pointing to the things they might have missed.

You can meet one version of that partner today. Try our AI Midwife by clicking here.

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