05.16.19
At this week’s FutureSummits, imec and Bloomlife – an imec spin-off – showcase a prototype of the world’s first wearable 5-channel electrocardiogram (ECG) chip to continuously and accurately monitor fetal heart rate and mobility, two important indicators of a baby’s wellbeing.
With the development of this chip, a major hurdle has been taken in the creation of a wearable ECG system that can accurately measure the fetal ECG as early as week 20 in a woman’s pregnancy.
Pregnancy is often a time of excitement, but it also comes with uncertainty. It can feel like there are many unknowns, especially in terms of the baby’s wellbeing and during the times between doctors’ appointments. At-home pregnancy monitoring systems could take away some of that uncertainty and provide valuable insights and data. Today’s wearable solutions are typically limited to tracking maternal health parameters, spot-checking or contraction monitoring and are not providing a real-time, continuous report of a baby’s wellness.
Bloomlife’s purposely-built BeatleIC chip, which leverages imec’s unique integrated circuit (IC) technology know-how, is the only chip on the market today that has all required characteristics to accurately track a fetus’ wellbeing indicators – such as heart rate and mobility – throughout the second half of a woman’s pregnancy. Existing chips either consume too much energy to be of any practical use in wearable solutions or are not capable of tracking the right fetal parameters.
The BeatleIC chip features:
With the development of this chip, a major hurdle has been taken in the creation of a wearable ECG system that can accurately measure the fetal ECG as early as week 20 in a woman’s pregnancy.
Pregnancy is often a time of excitement, but it also comes with uncertainty. It can feel like there are many unknowns, especially in terms of the baby’s wellbeing and during the times between doctors’ appointments. At-home pregnancy monitoring systems could take away some of that uncertainty and provide valuable insights and data. Today’s wearable solutions are typically limited to tracking maternal health parameters, spot-checking or contraction monitoring and are not providing a real-time, continuous report of a baby’s wellness.
Bloomlife’s purposely-built BeatleIC chip, which leverages imec’s unique integrated circuit (IC) technology know-how, is the only chip on the market today that has all required characteristics to accurately track a fetus’ wellbeing indicators – such as heart rate and mobility – throughout the second half of a woman’s pregnancy. Existing chips either consume too much energy to be of any practical use in wearable solutions or are not capable of tracking the right fetal parameters.
The BeatleIC chip features:
- A 5-channel ECG sensor to enable simultaneous recording of all perinatal health related signals;
- Low power consumption to enable long-term and continuous use (featuring a battery lifetime of approximately one week on a coin cell);
- High accuracy to enable fetal ECG data acquisition at very low amplitude levels (between 3 and 15µV peak-peak).
