Smart Foetal Monitoring
Low-cost foetal heart rate and activity monitoring for remote and rural communities
The poor birth statistics (such as rate of preterm birth) among the Indigenous population in remote and rural Australia is more than twice of that of the non-Indigenous population over the past decade. Among the many studies completed, it was found that increased access to antenatal care, such as ultrasound scans and monitoring of the foetal heart rate (FHR), among such communities leads to significantly fewer preterm births among such rural and remote Indigenous populations. While FHR monitoring cannot prevent a problem pregnancy from occurring, it can alert an Obstetrician or Midwife to warning signs and allow them to take steps to help the baby. The tyranny of distance prevents remote and rural Indigenous populations from accessing even reasonable quality antenatal care to remote and rural populations.
Although these remote and rural populations are physically distant from such needed medical care, much communities are often connected to the outside world through modern communication technologies, such as satellite phones. Hence, through the deployment of telemedicine technologies, it is possible to extend such quality antenatal care to these remote and rural communities.
Dr Alfred Tan and Dr Martin Masek, at the School of Computer and Information Science (SCIS), Edith Cowan University, have been awarded US$100,000 from Microsoft to research mobile solutions to this important problem. The result is a solution with the following benefits:
- A simple mobile foetal heart rate and activity monitoring system, operating on "off-the-shelf" smart mobile phones and inexpensive, portable, handheld Doppler devices;
- Real time and constant antenatal care and monitoring via mobile networks, overcoming the tyranny of distance for rural and remote communities;
- Cost reduction - Applicable to all settings (both urban and rural), reducing the ever growing demand for hospital beds, when health resources are already stretched to their limits;
- Software downloadable to any smart mobile phones with minimal operating costs.
Healthcare providers and investment partners are being sought to extend this innovative technology for further trials and deployment nationally and internationally. The primary focus will be to leverage contributions (financial and in-kind) from such partners to attain government support for further developments.