Projektet "Nyfødt" har udviklet et koncept for et digitalt dialogværktøj til forældre. Fra venstre  Peyman Kor Data Science, DTU, Henriette Hintz udviklingsjordemoder Hvidovre Hospital, Lasse B. Alsbirk, Data Science, ITU, Adi Iyer, AI Engineering, DTU. Foto: Borsen.

Dialogue tool for parents wins digital competition

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DTU awards first prize of DKK 100,000 to student-developed digital dialogue tool for first-time parents.

Digital technologies such as machine learning and digital image analysis must be actively employed to ensure that parents of newborns have access to information about acute problems. This is the idea behind the first innovation project which was awarded DTU Skylab Digital’s prize of DKK 100,000 to develop digital solutions for healthcare professionals.

The project was realized as part of an innovation competition Digi DiveX—AI in healthtech—a four-day innovation course.  The competition, held for the first time at DTU Skylab in October, stems from a collaborative AI entrepreneurial initiative between the Capital Region of Denmark, DTU Science Park, DTU Compute, DTU Skylab, and Nordic AI. The entrepreneurial initiative aims to strengthen existing AI solutions—or generate new start-ups that use artificial intelligence (AI) in the healthcare sector.

The winning project—‘Nyfødt’ (Newborn)—was developed by four DTU students and a student from the IT University of Copenhagen. The project outlines a website solution that will provide digital information on uncritical post-childbirth issues, thus easing the workload of midwives who currently answer some of the many questions posed by first-time parents.

Machine learning and image recognition

The ‘Newborn’ solution is based on machine learning, where parents are either referred to more general information online - or to a midwife - if their problem is deemed acute. The digital data processing is complemented by information from the child’s and parents’ records and is included in the presentation of their case, so they don’t have to start afresh when they speak to the midwife.

Newborn project participant Lasse B. Alsbirk who is studying Data Science at the IT University, explains that the solution will build on the experiences that form part of digital communication - e.g. from apps like Vivino, which is based on image recognition.

“Image recognition will be a powerful tool—e.g. in determining whether an infant has a type of diarrhoea for which parents need to seek urgent help. Other solutions may involve using existing data from the Health Platform actively in the information to parents and midwives,” says Lasse B. Alsbirk.

In the ongoing work of developing Newborn, the five students can use the DKK 100,000 from Digi DiveX to purchase staff hours from the Capital Region of Denmark and to cover other expenses.

Cases from healthcare

The Digi DiveX contest featured a total of 25 digital innovators—mainly computer science students with competences in AI development. The participants, who were split into five teams and assigned to three different clinician cases from different departments in the Capital Region of Denmark, were then required to develop their own specific AI-based solutions.

Through contact with the Capital Region of Denmark’s Centre for Human Resources, a ‘New Parents’ case was identified at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Hvidovre Hospital. Another case for digital monitoring of patients’ diet and nutrition was provided by the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Clinical Research at Copenhagen University Hospital, which has premises at Hvidovre Hospital. And the third case on the use of AI for preventive healthcare came from the New North Zealand Hospital.

DTU Skylab’s three collaborators who had delivered cases participated actively in the workshops and maintained regular dialogue with the groups. In addition, AI/health start-ups acted as mentors, sources of inspiration, and served as an assessment panel for the solutions. Nordic AI made fielded mentors from Corti and Unumed. DTU Skylab provided inspiration in the form of presentations by the founders of renowned start-ups such as Cellari, Measurelet ApS, and Radiobotics. And DTU Health Tech supplied a postdoc in health data as a mentor.