What’s going on in there?

TALK about early adopters. The next generation could start lifelogging even before they are born. A wearable device lets expectant mothers listen in on their developing baby’s heartbeat and movements continuously, rather than just when she goes into the hospital for a scan.

The device consists of a lightweight harness with sensor-laden straps that go over and around the bump. Its inventors believe the system will offer peace of mind to pregnant women, as well as help doctors to monitor high-risk cases remotely rather than keeping women in hospital for observation. It might even reveal new insights about pregnancy itself.

“High-risk pregnancies can be monitored remotely by the belt, so women won’t have to go to hospital”


Technology for monitoring fetal health at home already exists, but it tends to be tricky to use because you have to move the device around to find the fetus’s heartbeat. “The baby’s heart is about a centimetre in size. It’s inside of the baby, inside of the uterus, inside of the liquid. It’s moving constantly,” says Oren Oz, CEO of Nuvo Group, the Israeli company behind the device.

The first version of the belt, called Ritmo, is designed for women to buy and use themselves and will go on sale by the end of this year. It will have 13 sensors wrapping around the belly, including acoustic and ECG sensors to monitor the heartbeat, with motion sensors to track kicks, contractions and other movements. “We record everything possible from the surface of the abdomen about the pregnancy,” Oz says.

The information is sent to a cloud server for processing, and the results are sent back to the user’s smartphone. This should reassure them that the fetus is still alive and kicking, even if it hasn’t been moving much – because it is sleeping, for instance. It should also allow people to chart how certain activities – like listening to music or meditation – affect the heartbeat of mother and fetus. The device, which was previewed at the Wearable Technology Show in London last week, will cost $200 to $250.

Rachel Tribe, who studies women’s health and pregnancy at King’s College London, agrees that this device has the potential to be helpful. But she cautions that round-the-clock monitoring could cause anxiety for some women. “The use of all self-monitoring devices brings dangers of both increasing unnecessary anxiety and giving false reassurance, so the device would require rigorous clinical testing before it could be safely used,” she says.

Nuvo Group is planning a medical grade version of the device, called Pregsense, which will have more sensors and better accuracy. With approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, Oz says, doctors could use it to monitor patients remotely and pick up any complications early.

Oz hopes the data these devices generate will lead researchers to new insights about pregnancy, as well as providing personalised predictions for women. The team might be able to warn a woman that she is under too much stress, for instance, and needs to change her eating and sleeping habits to avoid complications. “We’ll know that if you continue that way, you are going to end up in hospital. Why? Because we will have measured 100,000 women and 95 per cent of them following the same trajectory end up in hospital if they don’t change now,” says Oz.

The team would then be able to offer advice and see whether it helps. “That’s where it gets really exciting,” says Oz. “This is predictive, and this is where you can actually save lives.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Baby bump sensor belt lifelogs before birth”