Increasing investments in emerging technologies across low- and middle-income countries have created unprecedented opportunities to leverage digital innovations to enhance voluntary family planning programs. In particular, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to gain new insights into family planning and optimize decision-making can have a lasting impact on programs, services, and users. Current advances in AI are just the beginning. As these approaches and tools are refined, practitioners should not miss the opportunity to apply AI to expand the reach of family planning programs and strengthen their impact.
By applying the USAID-developed framework of AI use in health care, we can classify AI’s potential application in family planning programs into four categories:
Below are examples of AI use relevant to family planning programs for select subcategories from the USAID framework.
Population Health
Intervention selection. Specific family planning methods are recommended based on an examination of the characteristics of a given population at risk of unmet need for family planning and what is likely to be most effective and efficient for meeting their needs.
Individual Health—Care Routing
Self-referral. Based on patient-entered, real-time data, an AI-enabled system provides recommendations to the patient on the care needed.
Personalized outreach. Real-time patient data is captured and analyzed to identify patterns to generate personalized, direct patient outreach (for example, messages from health care providers and chatbots, care recommendations).
Individual Health—Care Services
Behavioral change. Individuals receive real-time, targeted information or customized guidance on family planning options.
Data-driven diagnosis. Diagnose conditions by analyzing symptoms and other data provided by patients.
Clinical decision support. Health workers receive real-time guidance on best-practice family planning care based on patient data.
AI-facilitated care. Patients receive guidance on best practices for self-care for family planning based on their symptoms and situations.
Compliance monitoring. Alert users or providers about medication compliance based on patient-use data.
Health Systems
Capacity planning and personnel management. Examine data on facility-level care needs and the availability of health workers to help predict and plan resources.
Quality assurance and training. Analyze past decisions and identify where errors may have been made to improve the quality and efficiency of the provided family planning services.
Medical records. Assist in creating electronic medical records to limit the time providers spend on the task.
Coding and billing. Support provider finance functions by analyzing medical notes to ensure proper coding; billing strategies are also optimized.
Pharma and Medtech
Supply chain and planning optimization. Improve family planning supply chain management and resource planning by automating the process.
Family planning programs have not yet implemented some of these uses of AI, but the technology is expected to create efficiencies in how family planning services are delivered and increase affordability and coverage. According to the IT consulting firm Accenture, AI-powered health applications may result in annual cost savings of $150 billion for the U.S. health care economy by 2026. Experts also recognize the potential savings in low- and middle-income countries. Early lessons can be drawn from family planning projects that have used AI, demonstrating both the opportunity for its use and its potential impact, highlighted here.
Individual Health—Care Routing
Personalized outreach
Data science firm AIfluence has partnered with MSI Reproductive Choices, PSI, and Jhpiego to support sexual and reproductive health-focused social behavior change campaigns in Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, and Uganda. Using AI, they identify the appropriate influencers to communicate with different audiences on social media by measuring and analyzing an influencer’s affinity to the campaign, looking at how positive their connection to their network is and how much meaningful engagement their posts generate. For example, Alfluence worked with MSI Reproductive Choices on a social media campaign to promote testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in Eastleigh, Nairobi, Kenya. They collaborated with 38 influencers to regularly post content to their social media accounts over a six-week period to drive more adolescents to these services and try to understand the barriers to accessing preventative health services, including family planning, within the community. The marketing campaign reached more than 1.5 million people on social media, a quarter of whom were youth and almost a third of whom were male. The project demonstrated success in partnering with influencers to drive demand for and uptake of preventative services.
Individual Health—Care Services
Behavioral change
Data-driven diagnosis
Pharma and Medtech
Supply chain and planning optimization
These projects provide early insights into the potential opportunities to incorporate AI tools and technologies to advance family planning programs for decision-makers and program managers designing new solutions or looking to scale tested solutions. While the integration of AI-based solutions will ultimately be based on country context, capacities, and specific needs, innovators and other stakeholders need to continue sharing lessons learned to advance the field.
Do you have an AI (or other digital health technology) for a family planning project serving a low- or middle-income country to share? To promote learning on AI for family planning, along with other digital health innovations, the PACE Project at PRB developed the Digital Health Compendium. The compendium is managed by The Medical Concierge Group and aims to consolidate emerging information and data on applications of digital technology in family planning programs to inform the adoption and scale-up of successful approaches. Contact us for the opportunity to get your project featured in the Digital Health Compendium.