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SMART Diaphragm: Changing the Way Doctors Detect High-Risk Pregnancies

Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Apr 22, 2011

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SMART Diaphragm: Changing the Way Doctors Detect High-Risk Pregnancies data sheet 2572 Views

Pre-term births can result in dangerous deliveries for mothers and life-long medical problems for children. Currently, one in ten babies are born prematurely, but a new project called SMART Diaphragm is working to change this through an early detection system.

SMART Diaphragm is an early warning system for high-risk pregnancies. Pregnant women insert a sensor-enabled diaphragm that monitors changing collagen levels in the woman's cervix. The results are wirelessly transmitted via bluetooth-enabled phones to a cloud data storage system.

Website URL: 
http://project.vodafone-us.com...
Organization involved in the project?: 
Smart Diaphragm
Project goals: 

The project goals were: Create an affordable, accessible way to identify problems in high-risk pregnancies before visible symptoms occur. Build a wireless monitoring system that works in both developed and developing regions.

 

Brief description of the project: 

Smart Diaphragm is an early warning system for high-risk pregnancies. Pregnant women insert a sensor-enabled diaphragm (the Smart Diaphragm), which monitors changing collagen levels in the woman's cervix, and the results are wirelessly transmitted via bluetooth-enabled phones to a cloud data storage system.

Target audience: 

Pregnant women with high-risk pregnancies for premature birth

Length of Project (in months) : 
12
Status: 
Under Development
Anticipated launch date: 
2011 Oct
What worked well? : 

The team reports that the partnership between the group of bio-engineers and obstetricians trained for high-risk pregnancies resulted in a great deal of creative ideas as the groups brought different backgrounds and skill sets to the team. They also found that using the sensor-enabled diaphragm worked well as many women were already familiar with the device as a means of contraception, and thus could insert and remove it themselves without needing a physician's help.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

One challenge the group has faced is getting the product ready for control testing as it's very difficult to clinically study devices in pregnant women; the measures taken for safety are extremely high so as not to hurt the mother or fetus, and the pregnancy only lasts a finite amount of time.

Links to any evaluations/reports/research: 
http://project.vodafone-us.com...
Countries: 
United States
Last Name: 
Rand
First Name: 
Larry
City: 
San Francisco
State/Province: 
CA
Country: 
USA
Email: 
randl@obgyn.ucsf.edu