It’s pretty shocking how prevalent late-term stillbirth still is – about 1 out of 160 fetuses die after 20 weeks or more of gestation. This translates to more than 25,000 losses out of about 4 million American pregnancies each year.
Remotaid is developing a non-ultrasound fetal heart rate monitor that can remotely alert the doctor if there’s any cause for worry.
The Hungarian startup is one of the 125 finalists contending for dollars from global incubator MassChallenge. It has received funding from TractionTribe, an accelerator with operations in Hungary, Vegas and Woodside, California.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
The Remotaid monitor can be strapped around a pregnant woman’s belly during the later stages of pregnancy – after 32 weeks – so as to provide continuous home surveillance of a fetus’ health. “Continuous,” however, actually means the mother’s recommended to wear the device for about 20 minutes per day, Remotaid CEO Peter Tatrai said. The company will sell the product to physicians as opposed to patients directly, he said.
“A problem with fetal heartbeat is always just an early sign of a future problem in the coming days,” Tatrai said. “It’s never a sudden problem that has to be analyzed in the moment – you always have one or two days after you identify the problem for real complications to develop.”
To allay the concerns of the commenters in this post, who were chagrined to learn that a Bluetooth-enabled device would be perpetually strapped to a pregnant woman’s belly, Tatrai said the following: The wireless device’s capacity to transmit data is shut down when strapped to a woman’s stomach. But when the device is charging – and it should be on the daily – its SIM card is activated and the heart rate data is uploaded and stored on a secure cloud system, accessible only to mothers-to-be and their physicians.
The company said its monitor has been tested for safety in about 1,250 Hungarian women, with data showing that using the product daily was easy and safe. Despite the large sample size, which included 24 high-risk pregnancies, zero stillbirths resulted when women used the simple device. The 24 pregnancy complications were actually picked up by the device, Tatrai said, which prompted doctors to perform emergency C-sections – ostensibly saving the babies’ lives. Results from the study have been submitted for publication in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, but have yet to be published.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
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.
This is an area of growing interest – Sense4Baby, for instance, was developing a similar heart-rate monitoring system before its acquisition by AirStrip. And there are a number of home-use fetal heart rate monitors on the market, but there are varying degrees of belief in their efficacy. Remotaid separates itself from the chaff by providing the only non-ultrasound device that would be available on the market. Its patented sonocardiographic method is safe for daily usage, as opposed to at-home ultrasound heart rate monitors that should only be used sporadically, Tatrai said.
“The main difference with our technology is that it’s the only device that guarantees absolutely no effect on the fetus at all,” Tatrai said.
