Wearable Sensors for Healthier Pregnancies

Maternal and infant health is a global healthcare problem affecting developing and developed countries alike. Pregnancy complications increase the risk of maternal and infant death, and are associated with adverse outcomes such as miscarriage, stillbirth, and preterm birth. Lifestyle modifications before and during pregnancy have been shown to reduce the risk of pregnancy complications. This paper evaluates the use of wearable sensors as an enabling technology to motivate healthier lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy. Wearable sensors have been used to track health and lifestyle in general populations. Pregnancy is associated with hormonal, physiological and psychological adaptations that need to be taken into account when quantifying lifestyle, and there is to date no solution available to accurately measure lifestyle behaviors during pregnancy. The main challenges lay in developing algorithms and systems capable of dealing with physiological adaptations, lifestyle adaptations, and enabling longitudinal monitoring throughout pregnancy. Addressing these challenges will open new opportunities towards an integrated and personalized approach to behavior change interventions based on sensor data. Putting such solutions in the hands of consumers will unlock a crowdsourcing approach to quantifying known risk factors, discovering new markers for pregnancy complications, and to answering some of the fundamental questions that remain around adverse outcomes such as preterm birth.