Beyond Survival: Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Respectful Maternity Care to Transform Maternal Health Outcomes - A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Despite substantial global investments in maternal health, preventable maternal deaths and pervasive experiences of disrespect and abuse during childbirth continue to undermine progress, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool for predicting obstetric complications, including postpartum haemorrhage, preeclampsia, sepsis, and obstructed labour. Most existing applications remain narrowly focused on biomedical risk stratification. In parallel, Respectful Maternity Care (RMC), grounded in dignity, informed consent, privacy, equity, and emotional support, has gained normative recognition but remains weakly measured, inconsistently implemented, and largely absent from digital health architectures. This paper introduces a novel hybrid conceptual model, the RMC-AI Integrated Framework, that bridges this critical divide by combining predictive clinical intelligence with real-time respectful care monitoring and structured accountability mechanisms. The framework operationalises dignity as a measurable, AI-supported quality indicator through integration of electronic medical records, patient-reported experience measures, natural language processing of feedback, sentiment analysis, and facility-level decision-support dashboards. By embedding experiential metrics alongside clinical outcomes, the model enables simultaneous monitoring of survival risk and care quality. The framework describes the system architecture, data pipelines, analytical layers, governance structures, and ethical safeguards required to implement the framework in resource-constrained settings. The RMC-AI model advances maternal health innovation by reframing respectful maternity care not only as a human rights imperative but also as a quantifiable determinant of maternal outcomes. Moving beyond survival-centred paradigms, this approach offers a transformative pathway toward intelligent, accountable, and dignity-centred maternity care systems.

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