A PORTABLE WIRELESS BASED INTEGRATED SENSOR SYSTEM FOR THE DETECTION OF FETAL HEART RATE AND UTERINE

摘要

ABSTRACT OP THE INVENTION: Perinatal mortality rale is considered a good measure of the quality of health care in a medical facility/ country. Our aim is to provide technological solutions to help decrease the perinatal mortality. Strict fetal surveillance during pregnancy and labour is a must to bring down the perinatal mortality. Most medical facilities are unable to afford electronic fetal monitoring systems. l-ven among the few that can afford these machines, most are using wired feial monitoring systems which raises may problems such as high maintenance cost, lack of mobility for patient, time required for setup, professionals needed for .setup. These are bulky and .can only bo maintained in hospitals. Women with high risk pregnancies require antenatal fetal monitoring at least twice a week. This is difficult for those that are financially less privileged. especially if they live far from their health care providers. Travelling to and fro presents a financial as well as physical burden for these women. To overcome all this problems we came to a unique solution of wireless low cost foetal heart rate monitoring. This can be provided even at the homes of patients, with data being remotely transferred to doctors. Our system includes a penta-pod consists of electrode, microphone, ultrasound sensors and pressure sensor, which when placed on the mothers belly acquires the fetal heart rate (FHR) and uterine contraction (UC) signals. These signals then send to ID-PAD which processes those signals and extracts FHR and UC. This extracted FHR and UC values finally send to nearby system/mobile through bluetooth on which it can be displayed. This ID-PAD is wearable around neck and hence not limiting patients movements. This system is useful for patient home monitoring and also in medical facilities.