A computer implemented method of early prediction of risk of pre-eclampsia in a pregnant obese woman is described. The method comprises the steps of inputting abundance values for a panel of obese pregnancy specific metabolite biomarkers obtained from an assayed biological sample into a computational model, in which the biological sample is obtained from an obese pregnant woman at 8 to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and inputting a patient parameter for the pregnant obese woman into the computational model selected from at least one of ethnicity, risk of gestational diabetes, fetal sex, number of pregnancies and level of obesity. The computational model is configured to select a subset comprising at least two of the obese pregnancy specific metabolite biomarkers based on the patient parameter input, correlate abundance values for the subset of obese pregnancy specific metabolite biomarkers with risk of pre-eclampsia, and output a predicted risk of pre-eclampsia for the pregnant obese woman.