AI-Powered Text Service Expands Maternal Care Across Kenya

Jacaranda Health’s PROMPTS platform began as a simple SMS reminder system for clinic appointments. After mothers started replying with health questions, the service grew from fewer than 100 daily inquiries to roughly 15,000. An artificial-intelligence engine now parses messages in English, Swahili and Sheng, prioritizes them, and flags about 7 percent as potentially urgent for immediate nurse review. The system operates in 24 Kenyan counties and has been adapted for parts of Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania, supporting an estimated 700,000 users each year. At a cost of roughly $2 per user, the nonprofit-run program remains free for patients.

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Kenya records approximately 6,000 maternal deaths annually—about 16 per day. Health officials attribute roughly one-third of these fatalities to delays in seeking care, a gap PROMPTS aims to narrow by giving women a direct, private channel to ask about symptoms such as swelling, headaches or bleeding.

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Jay Patel, director of technology for Jacaranda Health, emphasizes that the service “runs completely over SMS” and can reach mothers without smartphones or reliable internet. Smisha Agarwal, director of global digital health at Johns Hopkins University, notes that AI “changes the direction of conversation” by centering the mother’s own questions rather than pre-scripted health messages. Laura Down, a spokesperson for Jacaranda, adds that aggregated queries are revealing environmental correlations, such as spikes in extreme heat linked to reports of headaches and swelling.

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• “If a mom in a rural part of Kenya starts bleeding at 2 a.m., she can't just Google it,” — Jay Patel, director of technology for Jacaranda Health

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• “It bypasses all AI functionality and gets straight to the help desk, into a special queue,” — Jay Patel, director of technology for Jacaranda Health

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• “She was told to go to the nearest health facility, because her baby was actually having jaundice,” — Lisa Mushega, a policy expert for HENNET, a Kenyan coalition of health care providers

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• “That conversation is really bounded by what a health system decides a mother should know,” — Smisha Agarwal, director of global digital health at Johns Hopkins University

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• “So for example, we're starting to see correlations between a spike in extreme heat and a spike in mothers reporting issues like headaches or swelling or dehydration," Down says.” — Laura Down, says spokesperson

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• “The sooner a mother is able to access care, the sooner doctors will be able to understand the problem," Waita says.” — Waita

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