Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Wearable Device Provides Continuous Fetal Monitoring




From Reuters
Israeli medical experts have developed a wearable mobile monitor to keep a close watch on pregnant women and their fetuses as they go about their everyday lives.

The PregSense monitor has sensors woven into an elastic harness to provide data around the clock on the status of the fetus and the mother's health in the later stages of pregnancy.

A bluetooth-enabled device attached to the monitor collects and transmits data such as the mother and baby's heart rates to a smartphone and stores it on a secure cloud-based database accessible only to expectant mothers and their physicians.

The device is the work of the Nuvo Group, led by Oren Oz. He says a smartphone app will eventually provide a visual representation of the data gathered by the wearable monitor.

"Now you can see both you and the baby, the heart and all the data. What you are going to get in the app eventually is visualization that can tell you where the hand is, you're going to see if the baby is awake, you can hear your baby's heartbeat anytime you want and obviously everything about you as the mom, the activity, if you are relaxed, how you sleep, your activity, your heart activity, everything about your pregnancy will be put into data," he explained as he demonstrated the device for mother-to-be, Michal.

Oz founded the Nuvo Group with another pregnancy technological innovation, Ritmo, a strap allowing mothers to stream soothing music from a smartphone to gently stimulate the fetus.

The Israeli tech firm hopes the device will reassure anxious mothers like Michal, in week 32 of her pregnancy, who require monitoring without having to see her doctor.



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