Fetal heart beat rate monitoring support device for pregnant women diagnosed with mild pre-eclampsia/hypertension in Tanzania

Abstract

The standard care for pregnant women in Tanzania is done in health facilities. The fetal heart rate monitoring among other things is done during scheduled antenatal clinic visits. High number of still birth caused by timely and inaccurate fetal heart rate monitoring is one of the major concerns in the management of those diagnosed with mild pre-eclampsia throughout their pregnancy. Pregnant women in the low income countries ,at gestational age of 28+ weeks are at high risk and require to perform fetal heart rate monitoring frequently. Therefore, the automated tool for self-monitoring of fetal heart rate remotely is of high need to save both the life of the mother and the unborn child. A mixed method was used to identify and gather requirements for fetal heart beat rate monitoring tool. Agile methodology was used to design the prototype of the fetal heart beat rate monitoring device. This study observed that, 54% of the pregnant women conducted their own fetal heart rate monitoring through charting fetal kicks manually. In addition, the fetal heart beat rate monitoring device has been developed to sense and record in real-time the fetal heart beats and pregnant women’s heartbeat. Apart from that the belt has also succeeded to record the temperature, location using GPS of the pregnant woman. Using GSM module and the Blynk Application the captured information is sent to the patient and health facility for monitoring purposes. In implementation of this study, it avails raise of awareness on the importance of continuously monitoring the fetal heart beat rate for pregnant women with hypertensive condition during pregnancy in communication with the health facility- medical personnel.