Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 24, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: May 27, 2019 - Jul 22, 2019
Date Accepted: May 14, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Continuous 7-month Internet of Things -based monitoring of Health Parameters of Pregnant and Postpartum Women: A Feasibility Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Monitoring during pregnancy is vital to ensure mothers and their infants’ health. Remote and continuous monitoring provides health care professionals with significant opportunities to observe health-related parameters in their patients and to detect any pathological signs at an early stage of pregnancy, and thus it may partly replace traditional appointments.
Objective:
To evaluate the feasibility to continuously monitor the health parameters (PA, sleep and HR) of nulliparous women throughout pregnancy and until one month postpartum with a smart wristband and an IoT-based monitoring system.
Methods:
A prospective observational feasibility study utilized a convenience sample of 20 nulliparous women from the Hospital District of Southwest Finland. Continuous monitoring of physical activity (PA)/step counts, sleep and heart rate (HR) was performed with a smart wristband for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over a 7-month period (6 months during pregnancy and 1 month postpartum). The smart wristband was connected to a cloud server. The total number of possible monitoring days during pregnancy weeks from 13 to 42 was 203 days and 28 days during postpartum period.
Results:
Valid PA data were available from a median of 144 (range 13-188) days (75% of possible monitoring days) and valid sleep data from a median of 137 (range 0-184) days (72%) per participant during pregnancy. During the postpartum period, a median of 15 (range 0-25) days (54%) of valid PA data and 16 (range 0-27) days (57%) of valid sleep data were available. PA decreased from the second trimester to the third trimester by a mean of 1,793 (95% CI 1,039–2,548) steps per day (P<.001). The decrease continued by a mean of 1,339 (95% CI 474–2,205) steps to the postpartum period (P=.004). Sleep during pregnancy decreased as well from the second trimester to the third trimester by a mean of 20 minutes (95% CI from -0.7–42 minutes) (P=.06) and sleep time shortened an additional 1 hour (95% CI from 39 minutes–1.5 hours) after delivery (P<.001). The mean resting HR increased towards the third trimester and returned to the early pregnancy level during the postpartum period.
Conclusions:
The smart wristband with the IoT technology was a feasible system for collecting representative data on continuous variables of health parameters during pregnancy. Continuous monitoring provides real-time information between scheduled appointments and thus may be helpful for targeting and tailoring pregnancy follow-up. Clinical Trial: none
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