Mothers who suffered traumatic natural labours have claimed an NHS inquiry ignored their concerns after using an AI tool to process their evidence.
Hundreds of women who were harmed when giving birth gave testimonies to a government-commissioned review of maternity care in England led by Baroness Amos this year.
The inquiry said it considered more than 10,500 submissions including transcripts of interviews and panel discussions, testimonies and reports of poor care.
Many contained devastating accounts from mothers who were denied pain relief, refused C-sections and who had concerns about their babies dismissed because, they believed, doctors and midwives wanted them to have a natural birth.
Among the evidence were 40 pages of accounts from women who suffered harm at Oxford University Hospitals Trust (OUHT). The first page of its report alone contained two mentions of 'normal birth ideology' while other examples included women who were told to 'trust their body' or have a 'normal birth at all costs'.
But when Baroness Amos published her full report in June, it concluded: 'We did not find that normal birth ideology was currently widespread.'
It has now been revealed that the inquiry team used Microsoft's AI tool Copilot to help analyse the evidence. When the inquiry's advisers were provided with AI summaries which they relied upon to produce their final report, these references to normal birth ideology were not included. As a result, it did not form a central part of the review's discussions.
Baroness Valerie Amos led a government-commissioned review of maternity care in England
'Normal birth' ideology
For more than a decade the Royal College of Midwives encouraged women to have a vaginal delivery without any medical interventions, such as pharmaceutical pain relief or forceps.
It argued that this was better for women and babies.
The normal birth promotion policy was dropped in 2017 and the RCM has since apologised for it.
NHS England also used to discourage trusts from performing caesarean sections, encouraging them to limit such procedures to around 20 per cent of births, but dropped the use of targets for caesareans in 2022.
Dr Bill Kirkup, an obstetrician who resigned from the inquiry team in protest at its failure to recognise the role of natural birth ideology, claimed there was a 'conspiracy of silence' in the NHS about it.
He told the Sunday Times: 'We do know from families who have the transcript of their interviews that [concerns about natural births] were raised more than once.
'Advisers never saw those transcripts or the written evidence submitted by families. The work was entirely based on the output from the AI tool.'
Dr Kirkup added that even after AI had stripped out mentions of natural births, concerns had been raised in meetings with experts on the review. However, these too were ignored.
The Royal College of Midwives encouraged women to give birth without any medical interventions, such as pain relief or forceps, for more than a decade. It argued this was better for women and babies.
However, this policy was dropped in 2017 and the RCM has since apologised for it.
Rebecca Matthews, who co-founded the Oxford group of mothers that lobbied for OUHT to be included in the review, warned that the use of the AI tool means 'the harm in Oxford has never been properly analysed'. She added: 'Lessons cannot have been captured and women and babies in Oxfordshire remain at risk.'
The Amos inquiry team used Microsoft's AI tool Copilot to help analyse the evidence quickly and produce summaries, which advisers then relied upon to produce their final report
Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was 'deeply troubling' that the inquiry may have overlooked the dangers of normal birth ideology because of AI.
He added: 'This is an issue that needs to be acknowledged and addressed, not met with defensiveness and denial.'
Baroness Amos did not respond to a request for comment.
In July, she told MPs that the inquiry team did not 'find evidence of normal birth ideology' but instead found 'examples where failure to recognise problems and escalate them appropriately resulted in harm'.
Source link
