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Home » Good Health and Well-Being » SDG3-NUVO’s AI innovations, providing safety for mothers and their kin–By Dr. Eitan Eliram Lead Innovation Strategist

NUVO’s AI innovations, providing safety for mothers and their kin

Nuvo, an Israeli start-up is determined to reduce the maternal mortality ratio in America. Founder and CEO of Nuvo Oren Oz explains why he founded the company, “Nuvo was born in 2014 at the same time as my third child. My wife was 37 weeks pregnant and became high risk. We suffered a lot of stress because of outdated pregnancy monitoring and medical practice. Thankfully, our baby was born healthy, but the experience left me with a burning desire to offer parents a more complete sense of their journey and reinvent pregnancy monitoring from the ground up.”

The outdated pregnancy monitoring and medical practice Oz speaks of are a key indicator for the increase in mortality rates in the US. Indeed 35% of existing solutions have a failure rate for measuring contractions, unsurprising when pregnancy monitoring and CTG is 30 years old and unchanged. Across America obstetric units continue to close and the number of Ob-Gyns are declining rapidly. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (ACOG) suggest the current shortage is at 6,000 to 9,000 Ob-Gyns (A healthcare professional that specializes in female reproductive health) countrywide, and expects this number to grow to 22,000 by 2050.

Nuvo is providing a solution to bring pregnancy out of the analogue age and into the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. It’s tech team designed a new remote monitoring platform that allows mothers to wear their patented wearable device. This device monitors pregnancy, it detects signals including fetal heart-rate, maternal heart-rate and uterine activity creating a comprehensive digital dashboard. Both in-clinic and home use Nuvo is creating unique accessible and visual data using cloud-based data which creates knowledge-sharing platforms.

With 10 US patents and 24 global ones Nuvo is not only providing tech for a safer pregnancy period, but also lowering costs. At the US’s current rate, $50 billion are spent annually on prenatal, antenatal and postpartum care, over half if this is spent on managing high-risk pregnancy (HRP) and premature births. The limitations on monitoring also means 75% of expectant mothers make unscheduled obstetric in-office visits, adding significant costs and time to the healthcare system. Basing evidence on a number of studies, Nuro suggests their tech will reduce costs significantly, in-fact, one study suggests a near 41% reduction in the annual costs of follow-up care using remote monitoring in the area of cardiovascular diseases.

Nuvo won a few prizes. The top innovative company award for the MEDICA World Forum for Medicine, one of the top five wearable health problem solvers 2015 by Nuviun, Finalist in the Ernst & Young Digital Health conference and much more. With tremendous prospects, Nuvo is helping to achieve the UN’s 3.1 & 3.2 goals of reduced new-born deaths and maternal mortality ratio.