It’s been a couple of years since I first spoke with some of the folks who brought industrial engineering, fashion design and OBGYN together. The idea is to solve the problem of how to monitor the fetal heart rate and uterine contractions with as much flexibility and comfort as possible. It’s established proof-of-concept. So now the group behind the Smart Fabric BellyBand is doing the groundwork to set up a clinical trial of 5-20 mothers.
The group includes Genevieve Dion, Director of the Shima Seiki Haute Technology Lab and Professor of Fashion Design at Drexel University, Tim Kurzweg, a Drexel associate professor in electrical and computer engineering and Dr. Owen Montgomery, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology and Drexel University College of Medicine and the principal investigator.
The smart fabric technology functions as an antennae and contains a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag using inductive coupling to transmit a signal to an RFID reader that can be picked up by a portable ultrasound. So when contractions kick in, the fabric stretches and the RFID reader can pick up those changing signals on ultrasound.
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Current practice for pregnant women involves strapping on a pressure-sensitive device called a tocodynamometer. It records when contractions start and stop. Although it’s noninvasive, the hard plastic it uses can make it uncomfortable, and women need to unstrap the wired band when they get out of bed, such as when they need to use the bathroom.
In a presentation of its technology at Pennsylvania Bio’s Life Science Future conference in Philadelphia this week. Montgomery said some of the important criteria behind the Smart Fabric BellyBand was to create a device that’s comfortable enough and accurate enough to wear without pesky wiring that limits the mobility of pregnant mothers. He said many pregnant women want to be able to walk around in the early stages of labor but are currently restricted to their hospital bed as long as they are being monitored. He recalled a case in which, in the time it took for a pregnant women to take off a tocodynamometer to use the bathroom at a hospital and return to bed, the baby’s heart sounds were lost and the baby was stillborn. The smart belly band allows more flexibility without the risk of losing contact with the fetus.
In the clinical trial for which it is preparing, its wearable fetal monitor technology will go head to head with a tocodynamometer. It will be interesting to see how the company’s technology performs in the trial and whether it will be able to balance the needs of OBGYN doctors with the comfort and safety of the mother and child at a reasonable cost.
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At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
