Pregnancy monitoring

After pregnancy is achieved, encourage routine pregnancy monitoring and care. 

Pregnancy — Cl may increase during pregnancy monitor ETH plasma concentrations and adjust dose as necessary. 

Textile-integrated electronics for ambulatory pregnancy monitoring... 

Some wireless pregnancy monitors are already available on the market. Most of them focus on FHR and electrocardiography (ECG) monitoring. 

As described in the previous section, the challenges of size reduction, comfort, battery life, and motion artefacts remain unsolved in current portable pregnancy monitors. In general, these issues have been addressed by the wireless sensor network (WSN) community. More specifically, they are researched under the name of wireless body area network (WBAN) (Gonzalez-Valenzuela et al., 2013 Yang, 2006 Latre et al., 2010 Chen et al., 2010). 

In addition to the sensors, other electronic elements are necessary for pregnancy monitoring. These include low-power amplifiers, processing units, and radios to transmit the data to a personal device. Nowadays, these are stiU hard elements soldered to printed circuit boards (PCBs), which can be sewn into the garment. An example is the Lilypad Arduino (Arduino, 2007), which is a microcontroller board designed especially for use with wearables. The board connection pins are holes that can be sewn... 

In particular, for pregnancy monitoring, the stretchability of the material and its ability to conform to the pregnant belly are of utmost importance to ensure comfort and good electrode—skin contact. Therefore, the techniques that preserve these textile... 

The design of a portable pregnancy monitoring device is a multidisciplinary challenge. Figure 11.1 shows the various angles of the design. 

Figure 11.1 Design space for the design of an ambulatory pregnancy monitoring system.

The type of interface is largely determined by who is going to use it and for what piupose. Therefore, the fifth design dimension is the decision of who the system is for. In the case of pregnancy monitoring, the system is used by both caregivers and parents, especially the mother to be. Moreover, the interface between the user and the system also includes the wearable itself, as it is in direct contact with the skin of the future mother. 

Figure 11.2 User requirements for pregnancy monitoring systems.

Perusquia-Hem idez, M., Chen, W., Eeijs, L., 2014. Garment design for an ambulatory pregnancy monitoring system. In 6th International Workconfeience on Ambient Assisted Living, pp. 1—8. 

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