Maternal health monitor
This project has been secured to protect intellectual property.
Login for More InformationBuild and validate a point-of-care diagnostic device to detect biomarkers of maternal morbidity for individuals living in maternal health care deserts.
Project Overview
The development of home-based and point-of-care maternal health diagnostic devices to enable maternal health monitoring for individuals residing in maternity care deserts to ultimately reduce severe maternal morbidity and maternal mortality.
Among the industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks highest in maternal mortality rate with 23.8 per 100,000 pregnancies, which amounts to approximately 860 maternal deaths in 2020. The majority of maternal deaths (52%) occur the day after the delivery, and others can occur within the first year after childbirth. When diagnosed early, many maternal deaths can be prevented. Thus, there is an urgent need for innovative technologies to monitor, detect, and diagnose the leading causes of postpartum morbidity and mortality.
The goals of this project are to first identify the biomarkers that are relevant to diseases associated with maternal deaths and develop a smartphone-enabled noninvasive biosensor technology to detect and diagnose the identified biomarkers from bodily fluids. The developed technology should be user-friendly to enable at-home or point-of-care (POC) applications by untrained users. The proposed technologies should generate solutions generated to allow continuous (or frequent) monitoring when access to care providers is limited and extensive diagnostic capabilities to inform timely return to maternity care when necessary.
This project is expected to target the priority conditions, including cardiovascular diseases (such as cardiomyopathies), hemorrhage, and sepsis, which are associated with high rates of severe morbidity and mortality during the first year after delivery or the end of pregnancy.
Team Picture
Contact Information
Team Members
- Meghana Kalluri - Team Leader
- Cate Flynn - Communicator
- Fiorella Fernandez - BSAC
- Elli Hosokawa - BWIG
- Alexandria Thao - BPAG
Advisor and Client
- Prof. Amit Nimunkar - Advisor
- Prof. Filiz Yesilkoy - Client