CHOP and Carnegie Mellon Secure $39 Million for Fetal Monitoring Tech

Current maternity care often relies on electronic fetal heart rate monitors that date back decades. Clinicians frequently struggle to interpret these signals, leading to high-stakes decisions based on ambiguous data. This uncertainty contributes to a cycle of unnecessary C-sections and delayed detection of true fetal distress. The new project, funded through the ARPA-H Making Obstetrics Care Smart (MOCS) program, seeks to bridge this gap by developing noninvasive, wireless sensors.

Led by Jana Kainerstorfer of Carnegie Mellon and Tiffany Ko of CHOP, the research team is building a system that tracks fetal oxygen delivery directly. By combining this new sensor data with existing medical records, the researchers intend to train machine-learning models that differentiate between benign fluctuations and genuine oxygen deprivation. According to Dr. Jennifer Lynch, the objective is to move beyond simple alerts to provide clinicians with precise, actionable insights into why a fetus might be struggling. The ultimate goal is to secure regulatory approval for a system that allows medical teams to intervene with confidence, reducing both preventable birth complications and emergency procedures.