Biotricity Expands Research Into Fetal and Maternal Applications

Small cap Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) company Biotricity, Inc (OTCBB: BTCY) has just announced that it will be expanding the scope of a previously approved clinical investigation of fetal heart rate variability (fHRV) to include maternal HRV and other key physiologic metrics for maximum predictive accuracy and efficiency. This is potentially a good area to be in due to the fact that high-risk pregnancies require extensive monitoring and care during the gestational period. High-risk pregnancies are also on the rise and now account for 6 – 8% of all pregnancies in the U.S. due in part to a rise in existing maternal health conditions (such as high blood pressure and obesity) and older parental age at the time of pregnancy. This means that the maternal and fetal monitoring market is growing rapidly and is expected to be worth $2.3 Billion by 2019. 

The problem is that with traditional pre-delivery non-stress test (NST) and during labor monitoring, fHRV is evaluated using decades-old techniques based on visual recognition. However, Low-quality ultrasound-based fHRV is substandard because it is not precise enough for mathematical processing, is too sensitive to changes in fetal and maternal position, and it does not include any maternal heart rate variability (mHRV) information.

Conventional external monitoring of contractions is also imprecise because high quality consistent monitoring requires electrodes and sensors be inserted into the mother and/or attached to the baby. This carries the risk of trauma, discomfort and infection.

Biotricity's goal is to innovate and displace established maternal monitoring solutions with non-invasive monitoring and high-fidelity ECG, HRV and respiration metrics combined with non-invasive quantitative contraction monitoring. A mobile, wireless and non-invasive maternal monitoring solution that incorporates HRV metrics will allow for real-time and real-life evaluation of both maternal and fetal health (which is especially important for higher-risk pregnancies). The Company's concept solution aims to overcome the limitations inherent in current maternal/fetal monitoring solutions.

Founder and CEO Waqaas Al-Siddiq commented: 

"We are targeting a previously untapped market and catering to previously un-met customer needs, because current maternal monitoring solutions do not offer an application that combines accuracy with comfort and the highest standards of non-invasive patient safety. A first of its kind, our goal is to offer a new approach to gestational monitoring and then to take it one step further by integrating a range of key patient metrics for a holistic assessment of maternal and fetal health. If successful, this will be another utilization of Biotricity's core technologies and clinical/consumer applications just like our FDA-approved Bioflux solution."

Biotricity is specialized in remote monitoring solutions for chronic illnesses who's platform is comprised of three key components tailored to a variety of diagnostic and post-diagnostic applications:

An IoT hardware with built-in cellular connectivity. An embedded Real Time Operating System (RTOS). The cloud for analysis and management of both data and devices.

This platform already consists of:

Bioflux 1.0 - A high-precision, single-unit mobile cardiac telemetry or MCT device that provides real-time monitoring and transmission of ambulatory patients' ECG information Biopatch - An ECG patch that's in development as an extension of Bioflux. Biopatch will offer an alternative to 3-lead systems and is ideal for patients with less complicated cardiac conditions.