Monitoring unborn babies heart could save thousand of lives. New machine can detect tiniest fluctuations in a baby's heart rhythm. Pioneering duo awarded grant to carry out pre clinical trials
A Sharjah-based medical team has invented a device which it is hoped will save the lives of countless unborn babies.
Their innovation is the first to provide readings of a foetus's electric heart pattern without the need for an invasive procedure.
The device is an adaptation of the electrocardiogram (ECG) machine, which records the electrical voltage of the human heart along a continuous strip graph. The new machine can reveal the tiny fluctuations in an unborn baby.
"This invention has great potential and could help detect foetal hypoxia," says Dr Janaki Gopalan, head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Dubai's Welcare Hospital."It is the condition when the unborn baby gets deprived of oxygen and becomes tired during delivery.
"Acidity levels in the infant rise, and it can be a reason for the baby to develop cerebral palsy. I am sure it could be a valuable tool and help to improve the foetal outcome by helping practitioners make better decisions before and during delivery." Doctors have been able to clip electrodes to an unborn baby once the mother is in labour, but a non-invasive technique for measuring a foetal ECG pattern has eluded scientists and engineers.
That is until an animated discussion between two electrical engineers at the American University of Sharjah in 2003, when professor Dr Hasan Al Nashash presented the enigma to associate professor Dr Khaled Assaleh.
"Listening to the baby's heart beats was not a problem," says Dr Assaleh. "The challenge was to achieve an accurate reading of the baby's ECG without having to use a probe inside the mother." Dr Al Nashash had been working in medical electronics for about a decade before he met with Dr Assaleh, a voice-recognition specialist.
"The innovation stems from the use of technology called the polynomic classifier," says Dr Assaleh.
"The technique was not actually designed for the separation of the mother's and baby's ECG signals, but came from my background in speech recognition." The university granted the pair Dh25,000 to develop the idea, which is currently being tested on 50 pregnant patients at the Al Wasl Hospital in Dubai.
The invention's potential courted the attention of the Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF), a Sharjah-based group that helps Arab scientists develop business plans for marketing their innovations.
Farhan Kalaldeh, a project manager for the ASTF, said the body awarded the team Dh100,000 to run pre-clini cal trials on their device and patent the idea at the US Patent and Trademark Office last year.
He says that with correct marketing, the devices could each be made available for around $2,000 (Dh7,300) to clinics around the world, yielding profits in the range of tens of millions of dollars.
"The potential of this project is huge," says Kalaldeh.
Meanwhile, doctors will be able to ensure unborn infants have healthy heart patterns as well as detect blood supply problems, oxygen shortages and highlight brain concerns, said Dr Assaleh.
By James Reinl
© Emirates Today 2006
