Cloud engineer and artificial intelligence specialist Louis Echefu has co-developed a mobile application that enables pregnant women to track fetal movements without an internet connection, with an initial clinical study examining its usability among expectant mothers.
The application, FetalKickApp, is designed to make fetal movement monitoring more accessible in communities where unreliable internet connectivity and limited access to healthcare services constrain the use of digital health tools.
Echefu said in a statement on Monday to The PUNCH that the application was developed in collaboration with medical professionals and engineers to address a maternal healthcare challenge, particularly the need for pregnant women to recognise changes in fetal movements and seek medical attention when necessary.
“Technology should reach the people who need it most, not just those with the fastest connection. We asked a simple question: how do we put a reliable early-warning tool in the hands of any mother, anywhere, even with no internet? FetalKickApp is our answer,” he said.
The PUNCH understands that the application was evaluated in a four-week pilot study involving 25 pregnant women between 28 and 38 weeks of gestation who received antenatal care at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital.
According to the study findings provided by Echefu, about two-thirds of the participants considered the application helpful for monitoring fetal movements, while 44 per cent strongly agreed that it was easy to use. Another 68 per cent reported satisfaction with its effectiveness.
The findings were published in the Nigerian Medical Journal, a peer-reviewed publication indexed in PubMed, The PUNCH verified.
The results offer preliminary evidence about the application’s usability and acceptability among the participants. However, the small sample size and four-week study period limit the conclusions that can be drawn about its clinical effectiveness.
Fetal movement monitoring is an important aspect of pregnancy care because changes in a baby’s usual movement pattern can indicate a potential problem requiring medical assessment. The application is intended to support monitoring rather than replace antenatal care or professional medical advice.
Pregnant women who notice reduced or altered fetal movements should contact their healthcare provider promptly instead of relying on an application to determine whether their baby is safe.
Echefu said the application’s offline functionality was intended to ensure that women could record fetal movements even in areas with limited network coverage.
“The same engineering discipline that keeps a financial system online can keep a health tool working in a clinic with no signal. The goal is dependability. A mother should be able to trust that it just works,” he said.
Beyond the maternal healthcare project, Echefu has worked across cloud computing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and software engineering. He has authored four peer-reviewed research papers covering areas including artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud technologies and digital healthcare.
One of his studies on detecting AI-generated deepfake images reportedly achieved 98.97 per cent accuracy under experimental conditions. He also serves as an invited peer reviewer for IEEE Access, having completed more than a dozen manuscript reviews involving cloud computing and AI-driven cybersecurity, according to the information provided.
His professional certifications include AWS Certified Machine Learning, AWS Certified Data Engineer, AWS Certified AI Practitioner, AWS Certified Solutions Architect and CompTIA Security+.
Echefu and his collaborators are exploring opportunities to expand the research through larger, multi-site studies involving hundreds of expectant mothers in African countries and other developing regions.
The team also plans to explore local-language versions in Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and Swahili, alongside partnerships with maternal healthcare programmes and affordable deployment models for smaller clinics.
Such expansion could extend access to digital maternal health tools, although its benefits would depend on further clinical evaluation and the availability of healthcare professionals who can respond to concerns identified through monitoring.
“If a simple, offline application can help a doctor catch a warning sign a day earlier, that can be the difference between a loss and a healthy delivery. That is the kind of impact worth building for,” Echefu noted.