CONNECTED PREGNANCY CARE MOVES CLOSER TO HOME

At Biopôle, Connected Health Development is advancing MONI2, a wearable solution designed to make high-risk pregnancy monitoring more continuous, comfortable and clinician-guided.

«Usability is key for us. We want to remove typical barriers to care by creating a product that functions more like ordinary clothing: it’s washable, easy to use and compatible with normal daily activities.»

Laurent Vandebrouck

CEO, Connected Health Development

Pregnancy care is changing. As maternal age rises and assisted reproductive technologies become more common, healthcare providers are seeing a growing need for closer monitoring during high-risk pregnancies. Globally, around 140 million births take place each year, including about 77,000 in Switzerland, and an estimated 15–25% involve conditions that warrant closer observation. For clinicians, this means finding ways to follow maternal and foetal health more continuously, while making care less disruptive for expectant mothers.

Connected Health Development is addressing this challenge with MONI2, a wearable monitoring belt embedded with multiple sensors and connected to a smartphone app. Unlike traditional foetal monitoring, which usually provides short snapshot measurements during hospital appointments, MONI2 is designed for prolonged use in everyday life. The system can track foetal heart rate, electrocardiogram data and contraction activity, supporting more precise insight into foetal well-being while reducing the need for repeated hospital-based checks.

The innovation is not only technological. CHD’s approach reflects a careful balance between patient autonomy and medical oversight. Expectant mothers receive simplified information intended to reassure rather than overwhelm, while healthcare professionals retain access to the detailed clinical data needed to define monitoring protocols and guide decisions. This distinction is especially important in high-risk pregnancies, where too much unsupervised data could increase anxiety instead of providing confidence. Beyond remote monitoring, CHD’s mission is also to equip healthcare professionals with new machine learning-based predictive health indicators that support the earlier identification and prevention of major pregnancy-related risks, such as preterm delivery, by enabling the remote detection of health deterioration in both the pregnant woman and the fetus.

Based at Biopôle, part of Switzerland Innovation Park Network West EPFL, CHD is developing its solution within a dynamic life sciences community. Its work reflects a broader shift from hospital-centred care towards at-home monitoring, supported by advances in wireless connectivity, cloud computing and connected medical devices. For patients, this model can offer more comfort and autonomy; for healthcare systems, it may help reduce unnecessary hospital visits and free resources for cases that need urgent attention.

Key Facts

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    births worldwide each year

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    births in Switzerland annually

     

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    15–25% of pregnancies require closer observation

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    physiological signals monitored - foetal heart rate, electrocardiogram data and contraction activity

From left to right: Pierre-Jean Wipff, Innovation and Partnerships Director at Biopôle SA; Laurent Vandebrouck, CEO of CHD; Dr Giusy Fiucci, COO; Professor Nicolas Sananès, CMO; Fernando Romao, CTO.

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