SUPA Powered MATERNITY

A biometric sensor kit for pregnant women to minimize the risk of maternal death.

SUPA Powered MATERNITY is a biometric sensor kit for pregnant women to minimize the risk of maternal death. It is comprised of a sensors integrated in a bra-like harness that measure a mother’s vital signs in labor and during birth and a mobile App that captures and correlates additional relevant data like environmental statistics or regional disease patterns.

SUPA Powered MATERNITY provides a warning signal for the mother in labor if a problem during pregnancy/labor is detected and automatically sends the vital signs to the clinic (via a text message) to prepare for the arrival of the women or to provide advice. The clinics are in many instances hours away.

Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization. SUPA Powered MATERNITY intends to lower that number and use the digital health data captured to democratize health care focusing on women.

Ethiopia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. It is estimated that every year, about 25,000 mothers die and 400,000 more suffer long-term disabilities due to complications during pregnancy, delivery or postpartum period. (Ministry of Health, Ethopia). 

Most of these complications develop during pregnancy. Other complications may exist before pregnancy but are worsened during pregnancy. (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/)

 “The three delays” kill women during labor: The woman’s delay in deciding to go to the hospital, the time she loses traveling there and the hospital’s delay in starting treatment once she arrives. Only about 15 percent of births have dangerous complications, but they are almost impossible to predict.(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/health/24birth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) 

Our medical adviser Prof Dr. Herbert Kiss medical director of Rudolfiner Hospital in Vienna and President of the Austrian Commission to ESIDOG (European Society of Infectious Disease in Obstetrics and Gynecology) advised on the necessity for monitoring women during labor and birth and the first 72 hours of a newborn.

It reduces maternal death by providing warning signs to the pregnant women and their traditional birth attendants. Additional stakeholders are governments and NGOs. At the onset of labor the pregnant women puts on the harness and wears it throughout giving birth. The SUPA App monitors and captures all necessary vital signs and notifies if there is a problem.

Field testing of MVP SUPA harness - MVP of the SUPA Powered MATERNITY harness + sensors

Field testing of SUPA App - MVP of SUPA App (MATERNITY)

Deploy in Ethiopia. - Final SUPA Powered MATERNITY harness + App.

SUPA Powered MATERNITY is a biometric sensor kit for apparel focusing on a specific use case. The textile based sensors measure vital signs using artificial intelligence and machine learning. The solution is economical, highly scale-able, and can be integrated with other devices/data sets using the SUPA API layer. The SUPA Powered harness can be re-used. The data can be used to predict disease patterns, count births, etc.

A travel to Ethiopia to visit friends at the United Nations spur the idea of creating a biometric sensor system, that women can wear in remote areas focusing on women’s health issues.

SUPA Powered MATERNITY shall be the first step. We thrive to improve it by training people to make possible changes to the kit. The data collection is an integral part of the product, which in turn shall provide data ranging from the number of newborns to environmental data, geo-location data focusing on the distribution of clinics for women, disease patterns, etc.

SUPA Powered MATERNITY resides with the attendant and will be re-used. The harness and electronics are re-used and the coin cell battery lasts for 300 hours of deployment and can be easily exchanged. We thrive to get Bluetooth enabled smart phones as donations. The App requires minimal maintenance once deployed.

SUPA Powered MATERNITY is one of our SUPA for good pillars (1. women's health, 2. environment + outdoor sports).

We'd like to raise additional funds from philanthropic organizations who are associated with such causes. In addition we anticipate B2B sales of the system.

Collaborating with a clinic to field test.
Financial support after the MVP.

http://www.instagram.com/supa.ai

Access to a network of researcher, investors, organizations who are making societal changes and empower SUPA to become an impact driven company.

Sensor technology and textile manufacturers.

OM Signal, Athos, Sensoria