Bumpe: A wearable smart garment to prevent stillbirth

In the UK, 1 in every 225 births is a stillbirth (baby born dead after 24 completed weeks of pregnancy); equivalent to 3,400 babies dying each year. Around nine in ten stillbirths occur before the onset of labour. One in three stillbirths occur in babies who have reached term and seem to be completely healthy.

Women who have suffered stillbirth can develop mental health problems afterwards; one study showed women experiencing stillbirth were 4x more like to have depression and 7x more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder compared to women having live births. The results are long-lived, with women reporting anxiety and depression up to two years afterwards.

Over 50% of mothers experiencing stillbirth noticed slowed fetal movement beforehand. However, movements differ between women and between pregnancies, and perceptions of movement are subjective.

KYMIRA, a market-leading developer of e-textiles successfully commercialised within the performance sports sector, now wish to create a wearable technology for non-invasive, 24-hour fetal movement monitoring deploying a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)-based piezoelectric sensor to help prevent stillbirth.

This project will enable KYMIRA and Radical Fibres Limited to develop and test prototypes in a clinical setting, generating preliminary safety and efficacy data to inform a post-project clinical trial. These outputs align with the 2016 National Maternity Review, which recommends personalised care based on unbiased information.