CES 2017: Meet the wearable sensor that wants to help expecting mums
Who said wearables were all about smartwatches and fitness trackers? This clinically validated pregnancy wearable aims to improve birth outcomes by offering a host of data that can be streamed in real-time to your smartphone.
Bloomlife believes its sensor that sits on the belly offers more than your standard contraction timer apps. It works by picking up electrical signals from the uterine muscle to automatically measure, count and time contractions (Braxton Hicks and labor).
It will also track changes in contraction patterns throughout the third trimester to see how the mother’s body is preparing for labour. Data can then be viewed inside the iOS or Android companion smartphone app.
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“Traditional approaches to clinical research are fraught with red tape when it comes to pregnancy”, says Eric Dy, co-founder and CEO of Bloomlife. “Naturally, anything that is perceived to risk a mother and her baby remain strictly off limits.
Bloomlife has developed a better way to move beyond the clunky inconvenient 40-year-old technology that is used in hospitals today that requires strapping women to beds. In doing so we improve the overall usability, and, since we don’t use ultrasound, allow for longitudinal recordings necessary to collect the missing data to advance our understanding of pregnancy and complications such as preterm birth.”
The startup is hoping to crowdsource the data it records from users to help identify biomarkers and pregnancy complications as well.
After nine months in beta and with four clinical studies completed, it’s now available to try. You can pay $149 to use for one month, $249 for two months and $299 for three months. It’s expected to land in late January.
