Woman’s Hospital tests AI wearable to detect postpartum hemorrhage

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Woman’s Hospital is testing a wearable monitor by the company Baymatob designed to detect warning signs of postpartum hemorrhage before a crisis happens.

The hospital is among the first in the country taking part in a global study of the device called the Oli monitor. Postpartum hemorrhage, or excessive bleeding after childbirth, is one of the leading causes of preventable maternal deaths.

Taylor Manola volunteered to wear the Oli monitor during labor when she gave birth to her son, Nate, at Woman’s Hospital. Nate arrived three weeks early due to Manola’s high blood pressure.

“If you would have stayed in there it could have been a different outcome,” Manola said.

How the device works

The Oli wearable sensor is placed on the mother’s belly during labor. It collects minute-by-minute data about her body and the baby. This data gives the medical team a better understanding of the mother’s risk for hemorrhage.

“About a fifth of your blood goes to your uterus you started bleeding out, you can bleed out really fast. There’s no way to predict it…and that’s what this device is hopefully going to be able to do for us,” said Dr. Robert Clifton Moore, Woman’s chief medical officer.

The device is named after the son of the company’s founder, mechanical engineer Sarah McDonald. Baymatob, an AI-guided maternal and fetal diagnostics company based in Australia, partnered with Woman’s Hospital for the clinical trial.

“What our Oli device is seeing is early signs of fatigue of the uterus that it won’t contract hard enough and fast enough, and hence…moms are likely to suffer from a hemorrhage,” said Tara Croft, Baymatob CEO.

The information allows doctors to respond faster.

“Get everybody lined up. Get everything ready in place. And that’s something that we don’t have currently. Currently, there’s not a way to predict who’s going to hemorrhage, who’s not going to hemorrhage. And so, utilizing data that’s already there that no one’s ever really captured before, utilizing that data, utilizing AI to help predict those outcomes is what we’re trying to do,” Dr. Moore said.

Louisiana’s high hemorrhage rate

Manola experienced bleeding with her first delivery.

“My uterus did not contract down like it was supposed to with my first one,” she said.

She was happy to have an extra layer of monitoring this time and is encouraging other mothers to volunteer for the trial.

“Do it. It is the simplest thing. They stick it on you, and that’s it. You do nothing,” Manola said.

The Oli study’s goal is to enroll 1,000 women starting with Woman’s Hospital in the U.S. In Louisiana, postpartum hemorrhage is just over 12%, nearly three times the national average.

“This is the great population to really kind of get your arms around about….these are the riskiest patients. Let’s make a device that works with the riskiest patients so that we’ve got good data and a good device,” Dr. Moore said.

“It’s our goal… to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for all mums and their babies,” Croft said.

Woman’s Hospital is one of five sites where the Oli Study is taking place across the country. Once the trial is completed this year, the product and data will be submitted for FDA clearance.

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