Fetosense

Solution Pitch

The Problem

In India alone, there are more than five million high-risk pregnancies every year. Studies show that regular antenatal care can reduce neonatal death and disease. However, frontline health workers in India can only provide 21 percent of antenatal care coverage, and routine fetal monitoring is limited, which contributes to 600,000 stillbirths and 3.5 million premature babies born every year. 

The Solution

To expand access to antenatal care, CareMother built a mobile care program that provides home-based and center-based antenatal tests. In this program, frontline health workers use Fetosense, a wireless, portable fetal heart monitor that uses machine learning to predict fetal health outcomes.

Fetosense is easy to use—health workers simply place a belt on the mother’s abdomen and start the device. With Fetosense, frontline health workers run tests, read results, and transfer data to doctors in real time—enabling remote monitoring by gynecologists. Through this system, health workers can make informed decisions and refer mothers for timely intervention, improving neonatal outcomes. 

Market Opportunity

CareMother’s total addressable market size in five years is $1 billion, covering 3 million pregnancies in India. The priority market segment is gynaecologists and general physicians and health workers, who serve 30 million pregnancies per year. CareMother will establish annual contracts with local municipal governments or public hospitals for a revenue sharing model with a minimum of 500 tests and 10 percent subscription fees.

Partnership Goals

CareMother currently seeks:

• Consultation on a referral strategy for revenue generation with medical specialists;
• Advice on scaling up strategy, including staffing, technology, operations, and supply chain; and
• Scoping opportunities to implement AI capabilities into the CareMother platform to enhance decision support.

Organization Highlights

Some of CareMother’s notable achievements include:

• Media coverage in CNBC, Forbes, The Better India, and Mumbai Mirror; and
• Participation in a range of accelerators: Google Launchpad Accelerator; Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University; Grand Challenges Canada, Transition to Scale; and Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

Existing Partnerships

CareMother currently partners with the Federation of Obstetric and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI) to support scale-up and outreach to gynaecologists as well as physician and nurse cadres.