LatchAid: A Smart, Accessible, and Scalable Solution to Support Women’s Breastfeeding and Early Motherhood Journey

母乳喂养支持部门已经被新冠肺炎瘫痪了。由于社会疏远措施，母亲们几乎无法获得面对面的支持。从NHS工作人员的产后支持，委托支持减少到最低限度，主要是电话/传单。母乳喂养对等支持小组在全国范围内被关闭，几乎没有被在线会议取代。一项全英国范围的调查显示，81%的女性觉得由于社会疏远措施，她们得不到足够的母乳喂养支持；75.3%的女性感到被孤立；58.2%的女性觉得她们的母乳喂养旅程因为新冠肺炎而受到负面影响。英国的母乳喂养率已经是全球最差的。先前存在的母乳喂养支持系统是零散的、不可扩展的，并且依赖于面对面的交付。研究表明，90%的母亲在她们想要之前就放弃了母乳喂养。母亲面临的最大挑战是：缺乏健康专业支持(57%)、疼痛、健康问题(55.8%)以及孤立感/抑郁感(46.1%)。迫切需要使用数字解决方案来提供母乳喂养教育和支持。Latchaid的Beta移动应用程序是与顶级婴儿喂养专家共同设计/共同开发的，被6大洲的用户誉为一项革命性的、亟需的创新。该项目旨在扩大/加强我们在四个改变游戏规则的领域的研发，以提供个性化的、可访问的、24/7全天候数字母乳喂养教育/支持/社区。**准确、多样的3D母乳喂养动画和增强现实**-使用户能够在解剖视图、灵活的相机角度和AR模式下，从3D动画角色中交互、沉浸式地学习重要的母乳喂养位置/技能。虚拟人物拥有可定制的乳房形状/大小，皮肤颜色可供包容和多样化。**可扩展、强大、全天候的虚拟母乳喂养支持小组**-在合格专家的陪同下以数字方式复制现实生活中的点对点支持小组。我们将专注于扩展该系统，通过利用人工智能支持的人类专家和虚拟支持者，在全球同时管理数千个虚拟支持小组。这还包括自动缓和；在对话中检测到的身体/情感问题自动升级；以及人工智能/虚拟支持者通过敏感的措辞/基于证据的反应识别用户意图的能力。**全面的人工智能知识库**-我们正在进化一个深度神经网络，涵盖母乳喂养、婴儿护理和产妇健康领域的知识，通过交互式聊天机器人全天候回答用户的问题。**个性化的基于人工智能的虚拟支持者**-模拟各种虚拟支持者角色(即修复者、同理心)，根据他们的需求和个性与不同的用户进行不同的互动。母乳喂养组织、被新冠肺炎疫情严重扰乱的专业人员可以使用Latchaid作为远程支持工具恢复服务交付。Latchaid的AI虚拟支持者可以使用神经网络对超过80%的用户问题/顾虑进行分类和解决。然后，更复杂的问题可以由医疗保健、母乳喂养支持专业人员以数字方式处理。这些响应被用来训练AI虚拟支持者，以不断提高其有效性、健壮性。这一创新不仅有助于母乳喂养支持部门的复苏，还有助于它过渡到一个数字新时代，在这个时代，可以全天候提供点对点和专业支持。通过解决健康不平等问题，提高母乳喂养率将带来显著的社会经济和环境效益；改善母亲和婴儿的免疫力、幸福感和预期寿命；显著降低成本，减少不必要的医院旅行/治疗以及大规模配方奶生产、包装、分销和消费所产生的碳排放。

The breastfeeding support sector has been paralysed by COVID-19\. Face-to-face support can barely reach mothers due to social distancing measures. Postnatal support from the NHS staff, commissioned support is reduced to minimum, mainly phone-calls / leaflets. Breastfeeding peer-to-peer support groups were shut-down nationwide, with few replaced by on-line meetings. A UK-wide survey shows 81% of women felt they were not getting sufficient breastfeeding support due to social distancing measures; 75.3% felt isolated; and 58.2% felt their breastfeeding journey was negatively impacted because of COVID-19\.The UK already had the worst breastfeeding rate globally. The pre-existing breastfeeding support system was patchy, unscalable, and reliant on face-to-face delivery. Research shows 90% of mothers gave up breastfeeding before they wanted to. Top challenges mothers faced are: lack of health professional support (57%), pain, health issues (55.8%), and feeling of isolation/depression (46.1%).Using digital solutions to deliver breastfeeding education and support is urgently needed. LatchAid's Beta mobile app has been co-designed/co-developed with top infant-feeding experts and commended as a revolutionary, much-needed innovation by users across 6 continents. This project aims to expand/enhance our R&D in four game-changing areas to deliver personalised, accessible, 24/7 digital breastfeeding education/support/communities at scale.1. **Accurate, Diverse 3D Breastfeeding Animations and Augmented Reality** - enable users to interactively, immersively learn vital breastfeeding positions/skills from 3D animated characters in anatomical views, flexible camera angles, and AR mode. Virtual characters have customisable breast shapes/sizes, skin colours for inclusion and diversity.2. **Scalable, Robust, 24/7 Virtual Breastfeeding Support Groups** - digitally replicate real-life peer-to-peer support groups accompanied by qualified experts. We will focus on scaling the system to manage thousands of virtual support groups globally, concurrently by leveraging human experts and virtual supporters powered by Artificial Intelligence. This also includes automatic moderation; automatic escalation for physical/emotional issues detected in conversations; and AI/virtual supporter's ability to discern users' intents with sensitively-worded/evidence-based responses.3. **Comprehensive AI Knowledge Base** - we are evolving a deep neural network to cover breastfeeding, infant-care, and maternal health domain knowledge to answer users' questions 24/7 via an interactive chatbot.4. **Personalised AI-based Virtual Supporter** - models a variety of virtual supporter persona (i.e. fixer, empathy) to interact with different users differently based on their needs, personalities.Breastfeeding organisations, professionals severely disrupted by COVID-19 pandemic can resume service delivery using LatchAid as a remote support tool. LatchAid's AI virtual supporter can triage and resolve over 80% of users' questions/concerns using neural networks. More complex issues can then be handled by healthcare, breastfeeding support professionals digitally. These responses are used to train the AI virtual supporter to improve its effectiveness, robustness continuously. This innovation not only helps the breastfeeding support sector recover but also helps it transit to a digital new era where peer-to-peer and professional support can be delivered 24/7, at scale.Increased breastfeeding rates will bring significant socio-economic, environmental benefits by tackling health inequalities; improving immunity, well-being, and life expectancy of mothers and babies; and significantly decreasing costs, carbon emission from unnecessary hospital trips/treatments and from mass formula milk production, packaging, distribution, and consumption.