AI for Social Good Summit: Mobilizing Artificial Intelligence for Maternal Health in Bangladesh

The AI for Social Good Summit convened at The Australian National University in Canberra from July 9 to 11 this year, providing experts from academia and public agencies the opportunity to discuss results and next steps of four policy-oriented research papers on AI capabilities to address social issues with a focus on Southeast Asia.
The summit was organized to exchange outcomes from four projects of the “AI for Social Good— Strengthening Capabilities and Governance Frameworks” (AI4SG) collaboration, which was jointly established by the Association for Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP), and Google.org in 2021.

Over the past two years, meetings and workshops have been held with government agencies and local experts in Thailand and Bangladesh.

In collaboration with the Bangladesh Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Programme of the ICT Division and Cabinet Division of Bangladesh, a joint collaboration between the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), KPC4IR conducted research to support the Bangladeshi Government in developing of AI policy frameworks and building AI capabilities in pregnancy monitoring.

During the summit in Canberra, Dr. Cornelius Kalenzi together with co-authors from NUS presented their paper on Mobilizing AI for Maternal Health in Bangladesh, and AI in Pregnancy Monitoring: Technical Challenges for Bangladesh.

With insights exchanged, the participants drew consensus to further AI capabilities in governance: local context and needs are key drivers for high-impact research collaborations, while trust and common goals are the main success factors for multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Following the summit, an impact assessment of the projects will be conducted, while a set of country case studies is under development.