Photo de Sasun Bughdaryan sur Unsplash
Today, PRS Healthcare brings you the story of an artificial intelligence project that is making pregnancy monitoring easier in Africa, and more specifically in Rwanda. What is it called? Disrumpere! Make ultrasound easier to use and more accessible, combat medical deserts, reduce infant mortality… This AI has a lot of goals, and we’re going to tell you all about them right here and now.
Presentation of Disrumpere
The idea behind this programme is to enable a trained non-radiologist to use a specially designed ultrasound probe. How can this be done? With just a few hours of training to get the hang of it.
This AI was developed by IRCAD. Disrumpere stands for ‘democratisation of diagnosis, screening, biometry and augmented percutaneous surgery through artificial intelligence’.
How does Disrumpere work?
All the measurements needed to monitor the pregnancy are taken automatically thanks to this artificial intelligence. We have added a function that covers the fifty or so different settings required to pass the probe, as well as a sensor for positioning the organs,” explains Alexandre Hostettler, director of the IRCAD.
The objectives of Disrumpere
As mentioned in the introduction, this AI has several goals.
- With just a few hours of training to get the hang of it, making ultrasound easier to use seems an obvious goal.
- To democratise ultrasound. The director of IRCAD explains: We work with portable, low-cost ultrasound probes – a few thousand euros, which is 10 to 15 times less than a standard premium hospital ultrasound machine and more than 100 times less than an MRI machine.
- Combating medical deserts. A. Hosteller highlights the fact that “three quarters of the world’s population have no access to medical imaging”. He therefore believes there is a “need to develop low-cost, non-invasive and mobile tools as an alternative to more cumbersome conventional medical equipment”.
- Fighting child mortality. According to Dr Benoît Sauer, another member behind the project: “The idea is not so much to be able to diagnose or not but rather to know with certainty whether there is something or nothing.”
France versus Rwanda
For a better understanding of the importance of the Disrumpere project, PRS Healthcare offers you some comparison figures between France and Rwanda
In France
Women have a fertility rate of 1.8 children in 2023. DREES counted 9,000 radiologists on 1 January 2022. This gives an average density of radiologists in France of 13 per 100,000 inhabitants. The maternal mortality rate is 233 per 100,000 births.
In Rwanda
Women will have a fertility rate of 3.7 children in 2023. The country has only 10 radiologists for every 12 million people. Conversely, the maternal mortality rate is 468 deaths per 100,000 births, twice that of France.
The importance of maintenance
Technological advances like Disrumpere aside, we can’t stress this enough: equipment in good condition is essential. As the saying goes, “a good worker always has good tools”. Did you know that? All studies of ultrasound probe fleets in hospitals show that 20 to 25% of your probes have visible or invisible problems. A faulty probe is bound to affect your diagnosis. That’s why our probe repair laboratory offers a range of services, including a fleet audit. Need more information? Get in touch
