Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the landscape in which healthcare is delivered. Prior to 2019, telemedicine was pitched as the next frontier. However, little was understood on how it would become integrated into modern healthcare delivery. Over the past two years, patients have become increasingly accepting of receiving medical care remotely.1This represents an exciting social shift that offers enormous opportunities for the improvement of Maternal and Fetal Medicine.
The use of fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) derived from maternal abdominal ECG as a biomarker of fetal well-being offers a prime entry point for the implementation of remote monitoring and telemedicine for this underserved patient population. ECG patterns are currently being investigated as early biomarkers of poor fetal and postnatal development.2,3Studies indicate that in-home stimuli like maternal stress can negatively impact lifelong neurodevelopmental trajectories.4Current practice is only beginning to use ECG as a source of biomarkers intrapartum and not at all antepartum. This leaves minimal time for intervention and correction of fetal development. Applying this technology to the in-home setting will expand the intervention window for providers, improving pregnancy outcomes. Mothers would continuously wear ECG devices monitoring both maternal and fetal ECG and its derivatives, such as heart rate (HR) and HR variability metrics, providing instant on-site and remote access to the health of the mother-fetus dyad. The first step in the implementation of such practices is gauging how perceptive prospective and existing mothers would be to the integration of wearable ECG devices in their daily lives.