India builds home-grown AI tools to predict preterm births early

Key facts

• India’s largest pregnancy cohort study under the GARBH-INi initiative has enrolled about 12,000 pregnant women to develop indigenous AI-driven solutions to prevent preterm births.
• The study has created a repository of over 1.6 million well-characterised biospecimens and over one million ultrasound images.
• The initiative has established a national biorepository and the GARBH-INi-DRISHTI data-sharing platform for wider research access.
• Union Minister of State for Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh stated that the programme supports AI-based pregnancy dating models tailored for Indian populations, microbiome-based predictors, rapid diagnostics, and genetic markers for early risk assessment.
• Technology transfer initiatives, including microbiome-based biotherapeutics, were formalised during the event.
• Dr V K Paul, Member of NITI Aayog, emphasised that the next phase should focus on effectively utilising the developed predictive models and platforms.