Interpretation
The time for disruption of the present antiquated maternal-fetal
monitoring antepartum has arrived. The required hardware and software
technologies have matured and converged with the people’s readiness for
telemedicine throughout the antepartum period.
Wearable products that monitor adult health and fitness do exist but are
not targeted specifically towards pregnant women. Therefore, currently,
no technology exists that provides information on the pregnancy
physiology or the health status of the fetus or the pregnant mother.
Non-wearable products that monitor aspects of fetal health exist in the
consumer space. However, such devices all share common pitfalls like low
fidelity ultrasound technology, very short-term (seconds to minutes)
observations without data recordings and provide minimal data analytics
(if any) value beyond brief entertainment and possibly perilous false
reassurance.
At the same time, the cost of hardware components required to build
high-quality ECG devices for this purpose has come down to such a level
that continuous antepartum monitoring technology is now achievable
within the price range identified in the present study. All required
software components are also
available.3,5–7
From physiological viewpoint, a pregnant woman and her unborn baby are
intimately connected forming one single physiological system.
Consequently, important information about their joint wellbeing is lost
when they are not monitored
together.8With one recent exception, all current devices use periodic
ultrasound-based monitoring which is less precise than ECG-based
monitoring and cannot provide the continuous monitoring (during maternal
sleep for example) that is possible with ECG-based wearable
devices.9