A team of researchers is working on a new wearable baby monitor that aims to reduce stillbirths.
In Australia, six babies are stillborn every day, according to the Stillbirth Foundation Australia. While little is known about why stillbirths happen, one symptom can be decreased foetal movement.
But a new device being developed by a team of students from a range of disciplines at La Trobe University, led by project co-ordinator Eddie Custovic, aims to monitor foetal movement.
The wearable belt will fit around a pregnant woman’s stomach and record foetal movements, such as kicks.
Custovic said obstetricians already recommend women place their hands on their stomach to count the number of kicks during a set period. However, the CountaKick simplifies this process and allows pregnant women to carry out their normal activities while recording the information.
The idea came about due to La Trobe’s ongoing participation in the Telstra University Challenge, which brought together students from a range of disciplines for the CountaKick.
For example, electronic engineering is required to design the sensors and the hardware required to transmit, store and handle the data. It is also needed to work out how to power the devices and miniaturise the product’s hardware to make it wearable.
“[Meanwhile], computer engineering was used to develop the embedded software to handle the data reliably and efficiently, and for the development of the server architecture and application. Computer science was also used to develop effective data storage and networking,” Custovic said.
CountaKick is still in its early stages, but the current model uses electronic sensors – pressure sensors – that have been built into a fabric belt that sits around the mother’s stomach and stores the data on an embedded device.
The device can be plugged into a hub, which consists of an AC adapter and a Wi-Fi transmitter, which charges the batteries and transmits the data to the cloud. This information can then be accessed on a mobile device and also be analysed by health practitioners.
Some of the design challenges of the CountaKick include the sensitivity of the sensors – they had to be sensitive enough to record even slight movement – and an aspect the team is still working on.
“At the moment we’re actually developing a hybrid solution to the problem. We’re embedding about 20 different microphones around the belt, as well as the pressure sensors. A combination of the two will help us detect real kicks and real movement inside the stomach,” Custovic said.
Other challenges include whether mothers want a wearable device like the CountaKick; how comfortable it would be; and how to design a device that could be adjusted to accommodate different size requirements.
“At the moment we’re working with a small design company that’s actually a clothing design company that’s helping us put together a stretchable fabric that is also adjustable in size,” Custovic said.
“The other thing that we’re also considering is that we don’t just build belts, but we also build what are called wearable singlets and the mothers can put on tops. The reason we’re looking at this is as an option is because it allows us to cover a larger surface area on the stomach, minimising the number of missed kicks.”
So far only laboratory trials have been conducted on the CountaKick. The team is hoping the first clinical trial will take place this year, which will include testing the data collected by the CountaKick with an ultrasound comparison to validate the data.
“That process is relatively simple. What we have is a bunch of sensors and microphones and we can stimulate the microphones and the sensors in many different ways,” Custovic said.
“You can artificially stimulate them by forcing a change, but we can also look at movement from different surfaces. We can (use) a balloon and cause it disruptions on the balloon’s surface to see if they’re detected by the sensors. There are various other ways we can do that, but that’s certainly the first that we’ll be looking at.”
The team will also examine a ‘normal’ baseline for the number of kicks that could be expected in normal pregnancies. They are also carrying out research with the Royal Women’s Hospital on when and how long mothers should wear the device.
So far a price point hasn’t been decided, but Custovic estimated it wouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars.
“They key to this is we need to ensure that it’s low cost so that it’s affordable for everyone,” he said.
[Image: FreeImages.com/Jose Torres]