Importance:Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have been developed to estimate gestational age (GA) based on blind sweep ultrasonography scans performed by novice operators. However, their generalizability to new clinical contexts outside original training settings requires evaluation. Objective:To investigate the ability of a previously trained AI system to interpret blind sweep ultrasonography scans for GA estimation to generalize to new clinical environments. Design, Setting, and Participants:This prospective diagnostic study compares AI model performance against the clinical standard for GA determination. The model was primarily accessed following lightweight adaptation using data from 1 setting. From a broader cohort of 2043 participants (1008 in Chicago and 1035 in Nairobi), datasets included an adaptation set of 120 Chicago participants (split evenly for training and validation) and a primary evaluation set of 385 participants (192 in Chicago and 193 in Nairobi) with GAs of 16 to 36 weeks. The study took place in 2 urban medical institutions, 1 in Chicago, Illinois (March 7, 2022, to May 28, 2024) and 1 in Nairobi, Kenya (January 8 to September 2, 2024). Data were analyzed April 21 to June 4, 2025. Intervention:A mobile application containing the AI system for GA estimation, with data collected via a protocolized blind sweep procedure by novice operators. Main Outcomes and Measures:The primary outcome was the mean absolute error (MAE) of the fine-tuned AI's GA estimation compared with the clinical standard (expert sonographer estimate), using a 1-day noninferiority margin. Results:The primary evaluation set included 385 participants (mean [SD] maternal age, 31.3 [5.6] years). The adapted model achieved an MAE of 4.1 days (95% CI, 3.5-4.7) in Chicago and 4.3 days (95% CI, 3.8-4.8 days) in Nairobi. Overall, the AI model demonstrated noninferiority to clinical standard estimates (MAE, 4.2 days [95% CI, 3.8-4.6 days] vs 4.5 days [95% CI, 4.1-4.9 days]; P < .001). Conclusions and Relevance:These findings suggest that the AI model for GA estimation, using blind sweep data collected by novice operators, demonstrated generalization to new clinical settings and a different ultrasonography probe. This study highlighted the potential of AI-based ultrasonography assessment to expand access to care through scalable cross-setting deployment, particularly in low-resource settings.
Although large language models (LLMs) show promise for clinical healthcare applications, their utility for personalized health monitoring using wearable device data remains underexplored. Here we introduce the Personal Health Large Language Model (PH-LLM), designed for applications in sleep and fitness. PH-LLM is a version of the Gemini LLM that was finetuned for text understanding and reasoning when applied to aggregated daily-resolution numerical sensor data. We created three benchmark datasets to assess multiple complementary aspects of sleep and fitness: expert domain knowledge, generation of personalized insights and recommendations and prediction of self-reported sleep quality from longitudinal data. PH-LLM achieved scores that exceeded a sample of human experts on multiple-choice examinations in sleep medicine (79% versus 76%) and fitness (88% versus 71%). In a comprehensive evaluation involving 857 real-world case studies, PH-LLM performed similarly to human experts for fitness-related tasks and improved over the base Gemini model in providing personalized sleep insights. Finally, PH-LLM effectively predicted self-reported sleep quality using a multimodal encoding of wearable sensor data, further demonstrating its ability to effectively contextualize wearable modalities. This work highlights the potential of LLMs to revolutionize personal health monitoring via tailored insights and predictions from wearable data and provides datasets, rubrics and benchmark performance to further accelerate personal health-related LLM research.
In health, most large language model (LLM) research has focused on clinical tasks. However, mobile and wearable devices, which are rarely integrated into such tasks, provide rich, longitudinal data for personal health monitoring. Here we present Personal Health Large Language Model (PH-LLM), fine-tuned from Gemini for understanding and reasoning over numerical time-series personal health data. We created and curated three datasets that test 1) production of personalized insights and recommendations from sleep patterns, physical activity, and physiological responses, 2) expert domain knowledge, and 3) prediction of self-reported sleep outcomes. For the first task we designed 857 case studies in collaboration with domain experts to assess real-world scenarios in sleep and fitness. Through comprehensive evaluation of domain-specific rubrics, we observed that Gemini Ultra 1.0 and PH-LLM are not statistically different from expert performance in fitness and, while experts remain superior for sleep, fine-tuning PH-LLM provided significant improvements in using relevant domain knowledge and personalizing information for sleep insights. We evaluated PH-LLM domain knowledge using multiple choice sleep medicine and fitness examinations. PH-LLM achieved 79% on sleep and 88% on fitness, exceeding average scores from a sample of human experts. Finally, we trained PH-LLM to predict self-reported sleep quality outcomes from textual and multimodal encoding representations of wearable data, and demonstrate that multimodal encoding is required to match performance of specialized discriminative models. Although further development and evaluation are necessary in the safety-critical personal health domain, these results demonstrate both the broad knowledge and capabilities of Gemini models and the benefit of contextualizing physiological data for personal health applications as done with PH-LLM.
Importance Fetal ultrasonography is essential for confirmation of gestational age (GA), and accurate GA assessment is important for providing appropriate care throughout pregnancy and for identifying complications, including fetal growth disorders. Derivation of GA from manual fetal biometry measurements (ie, head, abdomen, and femur) is operator dependent and time-consuming. Objective To develop artificial intelligence (AI) models to estimate GA with higher accuracy and reliability, leveraging standard biometry images and fly-to ultrasonography videos. Design, Setting, and Participants To improve GA estimates, this diagnostic study used AI to interpret standard plane ultrasonography images and fly-to ultrasonography videos, which are 5- to 10-second videos that can be automatically recorded as part of the standard of care before the still image is captured. Three AI models were developed and validated: (1) an image model using standard plane images, (2) a video model using fly-to videos, and (3) an ensemble model (combining both image and video models). The models were trained and evaluated on data from the Fetal Age Machine Learning Initiative (FAMLI) cohort, which included participants from 2 study sites at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (US), and Lusaka, Zambia. Participants were eligible to be part of this study if they received routine antenatal care at 1 of these sites, were aged 18 years or older, had a viable intrauterine singleton pregnancy, and could provide written consent. They were not eligible if they had known uterine or fetal abnormality, or had any other conditions that would make participation unsafe or complicate interpretation. Data analysis was performed from January to July 2022. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary analysis outcome for GA was the mean difference in absolute error between the GA model estimate and the clinical standard estimate, with the ground truth GA extrapolated from the initial GA estimated at an initial examination. Results Of the total cohort of 3842 participants, data were calculated for a test set of 404 participants with a mean (SD) age of 28.8 (5.6) years at enrollment. All models were statistically superior to standard fetal biometry–based GA estimates derived from images captured by expert sonographers. The ensemble model had the lowest mean absolute error compared with the clinical standard fetal biometry (mean [SD] difference, −1.51 [3.96] days; 95% CI, −1.90 to −1.10 days). All 3 models outperformed standard biometry by a more substantial margin on fetuses that were predicted to be small for their GA. Conclusions and Relevance These findings suggest that AI models have the potential to empower trained operators to estimate GA with higher accuracy.
Background Fetal ultrasound is an important component of antenatal care, but shortage of adequately trained healthcare workers has limited its adoption in low-to-middle-income countries. This study investigated the use of artificial intelligence for fetal ultrasound in under-resourced settings. Methods Blind sweep ultrasounds, consisting of six freehand ultrasound sweeps, were collected by sonographers in the USA and Zambia, and novice operators in Zambia. We developed artificial intelligence (AI) models that used blind sweeps to predict gestational age (GA) and fetal malpresentation. AI GA estimates and standard fetal biometry estimates were compared to a previously established ground truth, and evaluated for difference in absolute error. Fetal malpresentation (non-cephalic vs cephalic) was compared to sonographer assessment. On-device AI model run-times were benchmarked on Android mobile phones. Results Here we show that GA estimation accuracy of the AI model is non-inferior to standard fetal biometry estimates (error difference −1.4 ± 4.5 days, 95% CI −1.8, −0.9, n = 406). Non-inferiority is maintained when blind sweeps are acquired by novice operators performing only two of six sweep motion types. Fetal malpresentation AUC-ROC is 0.977 (95% CI, 0.949, 1.00, n = 613), sonographers and novices have similar AUC-ROC. Software run-times on mobile phones for both diagnostic models are less than 3 s after completion of a sweep. Conclusions The gestational age model is non-inferior to the clinical standard and the fetal malpresentation model has high AUC-ROCs across operators and devices. Our AI models are able to run on-device, without internet connectivity, and provide feedback scores to assist in upleveling the capabilities of lightly trained ultrasound operators in low resource settings.
Fetal ultrasounds are an essential part of prenatal care and can be used to estimate gestational age (GA). Accurate GA assessment is important for providing appropriate prenatal care throughout pregnancy and identifying complications such as fetal growth disorders. Since derivation of GA from manual fetal biometry measurements (head, abdomen, femur) are operator-dependent and time-consuming, there have been a number of research efforts focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) models to estimate GA using standard biometry images, but there is still room to improve the accuracy and reliability of these AI systems for widescale adoption. To improve GA estimates, without significant change to provider workflows, we leverage AI to interpret standard plane ultrasound images as well as 'fly-to' ultrasound videos, which are 5-10s videos automatically recorded as part of the standard of care before the still image is captured. We developed and validated three AI models: an image model using standard plane images, a video model using fly-to videos, and an ensemble model (combining both image and video). All three were statistically superior to standard fetal biometry-based GA estimates derived by expert sonographers, the ensemble model has the lowest mean absolute error (MAE) compared to the clinical standard fetal biometry (mean difference: -1.51 ± 3.96 days, 95 participants. We showed that our models outperform standard biometry by a more substantial margin on fetuses that were small for GA. Our AI models have the potential to empower trained operators to estimate GA with higher accuracy while reducing the amount of time required and user variability in measurement acquisition.
Despite considerable progress in maternal healthcare, maternal and perinatal deaths remain high in low-to-middle income countries. Fetal ultrasound is an important component of antenatal care, but shortage of adequately trained healthcare workers has limited its adoption. We developed and validated an artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses novice-acquired "blind sweep" ultrasound videos to estimate gestational age (GA) and fetal malpresentation. We further addressed obstacles that may be encountered in low-resourced settings. Using a simplified sweep protocol with real-time AI feedback on sweep quality, we have demonstrated the generalization of model performance to minimally trained novice ultrasound operators using low cost ultrasound devices with on-device AI integration. The GA model was non-inferior to standard fetal biometry estimates with as few as two sweeps, and the fetal malpresentation model had high AUC-ROCs across operators and devices. Our AI models have the potential to assist in upleveling the capabilities of lightly trained ultrasound operators in low resource settings.