AI app with Microsoft Azure to tackle malnutrition in India

Bengaluru: Germany-based non-profit Welthungerhilfe has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) smartphone app, powered by Microsoft Azure, to tackle malnutrition in India.

The Child Growth Monitor - a cloud-based app powered by Microsoft Azure and AI services - can detect malnutrition and enable health workers to identify and provide care to children suffering from chronic undernourishment.

By March, the app will help health workers scan 10,000 children under the age of five for signs of malnutrition, across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

Twelve teams of 150 trained health workers have been provided app-enabled smartphones to collect the data of children, it added.

The app uses an infrared sensor available in some smartphones to capture 3D measurements of a child's height, body volume and weight ratio, as well as head and upper arm circumferences down to the millimetre.

The app loads that captured data into Microsoft Azure. Nutritionists and IT specialists then evaluate the scans by using Microsoft AI solutions, pinpointing a child's dietary health.

"Today, more than 800 million people around the world suffer from hunger. You can't solve hunger if you don't know where the hungry people are," said Jochen Moninger, Innovation Director at the Welthungerhilfe.

"The Child Growth Monitor app will emerge as a recognised, global solution among humanitarian organisations. In India alone, that could free up hundreds of millions of dollars for reinvestment into the lives of children," he added.

The new app will hugely impact the early identification of children suffering from malnutrition, thereby reducing the treatment time.