Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Friso Postma of the Early Signal Foundation in the U.S. will develop algorithms to translate biological data from wearable sensors on pregnant women such as temperature and heart rate to identify patterns that predict the onset of labor, to help get women in remote settings to health clinics in time for birth. They will select an existing wearable sensor to semi-continuously collect information on multiple factors such as gait, sleep architecture, and blood pressure of 60 Belgian women in the third trimester in their home.

Molly Guy and Chemuttaai Lang'at of Medtronic Labs in the U.S. will lead a team seeking to redefine how pregnant women manage hypertension and how clinicians remotely monitor patients' health. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy have overtaken hemorrhage as a main cause of maternal mortality in some sub-Saharan African settings. Management requires careful monitoring, which is problematic in settings with limited access to care. The team will assess integration of locally-appropriate wearable sensors into their existing hypertension management model of care.

Soumyadipta Acharya of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will develop a technology they call NeMo (neonatal monitoring), for families in low-resource settings to monitor their newborns at home to help them identify potentially severe illnesses. Infant mortality rates are highest during the first week of life, and in developing countries are largely caused by treatable diseases such as pneumonia or sepsis.

Yuehwern Yih of Purdue University in the U.S. will develop a cloud-based digital tracking tool to record data from local health centers in Uganda on the health status of pregnant women and the turnover of their stock, as well as diagnostic laboratory data, to optimize ordering and improve the availability of medical supplies. They will develop applications mimicking the current time-consuming paper-based registry formats to digitally record the relevant data, and adapt a material requirement planning system, which is used in manufacturing to track parts and maintain stocks.

Yamile Jackson of Nurtured by Design in the U.S. will develop a digital, wearable wrap with biosensors and a smartphone application to monitor kangaroo mother care - skin-to-skin contact between mother and infant - in low-resource areas, and improve its duration and frequency. The sensors will monitor the infant's temperature, position, and heart rate, and transmit the data to a smartphone provided to the mother, and to the cloud to be monitored by healthcare teams.

Ratul Narain of BEMPU Technologies in India will create a sleeve that can be simply attached to slings used for kangaroo mother care, which is a continuous skin-to-skin contact method of care for newborns suited to low-resource settings, to measure and encourage use. Kangaroo mother care is particularly beneficial for preterm and low-weight babies as it maintains their body temperature and thereby avoids hypothermia and promotes weight gain.

Syed Imran Ahmed of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh will conduct a pilot study of a wrist-worn device that can continuously monitor blood pressure in pregnant women for the early diagnosis of pregnancy-induced hypertension, which can be dangerous for mother and baby. Hypertension is difficult to diagnose because it requires multiple measurements of blood pressure during normal activity due to daily variations. Current ambulatory methods can only take measurements over around 24 hours and lack portability.

Debra E. Weese-Mayer, Roozbeh Ghaffari, John A. Rogers, Matt Glucksberg, Aaron Hamvas, Mark Fisher, Bill Grobman and Casey Rand of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics at the Simpson & Querrey Institute, Northwestern University in the U.S. will develop a skin-like sensor for newborns that improves the value of kangaroo mother care (KMC), which is a method used to maintain skin contact with the mother to keep the baby warm.