This week’s highly-anticipated product launch from Apple took on a special significance for West Health when a technology first developed at the West Health Institute took a starring role.
A few minutes into Apple’s unveiling of their new iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV during demonstration on Sept. 9, Sense4Baby, a wireless heart rate monitor system for babies and their mothers, was featured as the first example of an innovative new healthcare technology integrated with the Apple Watch.
Sense4Baby, originally developed at the West Health Institute, played a key role in Apple’s new product launch in September 2015. Click image to watch video.
Here’s an excerpt from the keynote address: “Airstrip has been used already to monitor more than three-and-a-half million pregnant women in the hospital,” said chief medical officer and co-founder of Airstrip, Dr. Cameron Powell, which licensed the technology from West Health. “But with our new product, Sense4Baby, we can now monitor these women in the home, leveraging the Apple Watch …. While she’s (the mother) is doing this test, she can actually listen to the baby’s heart rate right on her wrist …. Air Strip, plus Apple Watch together, will redefine how messaging and communication occur in healthcare.”
The Sense4Baby system includes a wireless monitor that attaches to the mother’s chest that connects to an iPhone and Apple Watch to send the signal to the patient’s doctor. The demonstration even showed how the system could play back the baby’s heartbeat.
Sense4Baby’s technology was one of the first prototypes researched and developed at the West Health Institute and licensed out to Sense4Baby, Inc. a startup technology company, who received 510k clearance on the system, an important regulatory milestone. In March 2014, AirStrip acquired the Sense4Baby remote monitoring technology which led to it being showcased by Apple, one of the largest and most successful technology companies in the world.
Want to learn more? You can read more about Sense4Baby in Bloomberg Businessweek, TechCrunch, GizModo and these stories in MedCity News and MobiHealth News, which explains the technology’s research origins at the West Health Institute.