Maternal and perinatal Health Research collaboration, India (MaatHRI)
Mission statement
To improve maternal and fetal health outcomes through large-scale collaborative multidisciplinary research.
Aims
- To provide a sustainable and scalable platform for conducting epidemiological and clinical research to improve maternal and fetal health.
- To facilitate timely and policy-relevant studies on emerging complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
- To build equitable research partnerships and strengthen research capacity in participating hospitals.
Method
Established in 2018, MaatHRI (which means "mother" in Sanskrit) is a research and training platform involving sixteen hospitals across six Indian states, which together provide care to nearly 100,000 births per year. The collaboration is led by Professor Manisha Nair from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark in partnership with Srimanta Sankaradeva University of Health Sciences, Assam, India and the University of Oxford, UK.MaatHRI supports prospective data collection to improve maternal and perinatal health outcomes and has the infrastructure to rapidly implement multi-centre studies, including surveillance of new and evolving health threats (e.g. the impact of COVID-19 on institutional births and maternal mortality). The platform supports clinical translation of discoveries from bench to bedside, development and testing of novel HealthTech products, enables laboratory testing of blood biomarkers, secure data management, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Development
MaatHRI builds on the experience of the IndOSS-Assam pilot study. It has since evolved into a robust and highly advanced hospital-based research and training platform, contributing to evidence generation for policy and practice. Its infrastructure ensures sustainability, ethical oversight, and capacity building among partners. Since its establishment, MaatHRI has created a unique databank of high-dimensional data from >31,000 mothers and babies (2018-25), which is supporting clinical innovations and evidence generation for updating policies and programmes to improve maternal and fetal health outcomes in India and globally.
