UPatch Wearable Ultrasound Enables Fetal Monitoring
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- Prof Sheng Xu of Stanford University said current fetal monitoring devices are intermittent and require hospital visits, causing missed data between scans.
- UPatch is a wearable ultrasound patch that can image a fetus for hours and track blood flow in moving structures such as the umbilical cord.
- Tom Park reported that in a trial with 62 pregnant participants, UPatch blood‑flow measurements closely matched those from standard handheld ultrasound devices.
- UPatch monitored fetal heart rate and blood flow in 52 pregnant women, detecting severe intrauterine growth restriction in a pre‑eclamptic case that led to a caesarean delivery to prevent stillbirth.
- Dr Antoniya Georgieva noted the device could provide crucial academic insights and has huge potential to directly prevent stillbirths.
- UPatch is being advanced toward a wireless version for daily life use, aiming to serve low‑resource and low‑and middle‑income settings.
Why it matters: Continuous fetal monitoring with UPatch lets clinicians spot dynamic blood‑flow changes and growth restrictions that intermittent scans miss, enabling timely interventions such as caesarean delivery that can prevent stillbirth. Pregnant women, especially in low‑resource settings, gain earlier, more reliable insight into fetal health.
