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A team from fetal physiology and neuroscience, including Victoria King, Simerdeep Dhillon, Michael Beacom, Benjamin Lear, Christopher Lear, Mark Gunning won the 2021 Velocity Innovation Challenge (social category) prize, from Uniservices & Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The team proposed a new strategy to improve fetal outcomes by using long-term heart rate recordings for pregnancy monitoring and management, LIME (Live In-Utero Maternal-Fetal Electrocardiogram). In a few pregnancies (~3 in 100), the baby does not grow adequately; 7-8 in 100 will be born too early, and in 1 in 200 the baby dies before birth (stillbirth). In current practice, baby is only monitored for brief snapshots in time, usually in hospital. The baby can tell us if it is in distress but we have to be listening.

The team propose that portable long-term heart rate monitors should be used to assess the unborn child at home or non-healthcare setting and that this will provide a robust evidence base to improve pregnancy management, and so reduce morbidity and mortality and the burden on both whanau and the healthcare system.