In this talk, we will present our work on the development of sensing devices based on electric potential sensors to non-invasively detect cardiac electrical activity of babies during and after pregnancy. We start by showing our design to monitor both: the maternal and foetal heart activity during pregnancy. We will show the suitability of our technology to monitor the foetal electrocardiogram (ECG) starting at week twenty in a study conducted for ten weeks. Importantly, ECG data is presented without any post processing given that our technology eliminates the requirement of signal conditioning algorithms such as having to un-mix both, the maternal and foetal ECG.
Then, we will present our novel smart mattress design to measure the babies’ ECG and respiration rate during birth. We will present proof of concept tests to demonstrate the potential of our technology to provide a quick and reliable application to obtain ECG readings in less than 30 seconds.
The benefits of our technology are: during pregnancy, to potentially determine heart related congenital disorders. After pregnancy, to assist the neonatal staff with those neonates requiring resuscitation though the display of real time ECG information required to assess the success such procedure.