Data for Health in Africa Meeting
&
5th DS-I Africa Consortium Meeting
23 - 29 August 2025
CEDI Centre, University of Ghana, Accra

Ms Mercy Terer - Participant

KEMRI - Center for Global Health Research (N/A)

I am a data scientist and PhD researcher at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, conducting my research at KEMRI - Center for Global Health Research in Kisumu, Kenya. My PhD focuses on improving the use of routine healthcare data to assess medication safety in pregnancy - a case study grounded in low-resource settings with multiple digital heath systems. I leverage machine learning algorithms to address two major challenges: accurate patient record linkage and gestational age estimation. These are foundational to determining the timing of drug exposures and assessing outcomes such as preterm birth and miscarriage. Yet, both are often hindered by real-world limitations. Record linkage is complicated by the lack of standardized patient identifiers, while traditional gestational age estimation methods - though clinically recommended - are inconsistently recorded and affected by variability in measurement and clinical practice. The impact of this work is far-reaching: by effectively linking medication exposures during pregnancy to health outcomes, my research enhances the utility of routine health data for perinatal research. It also shows how combining clinical understanding with modern data science techniques can unlock critical insights for improving maternal and newborn health in under-resourced contexts.