Vasowatch is turning existing wearables into postpartum prediction tools

A Penn spinout is working to prevent postpartum bleeding, thanks to collaboration from a computer science researcher and a longtime labor and delivery nurse. 

Vasowatch is developing predictive technology that monitors the mother’s heart rate during labor and alerts the care team if there’s a heightened risk of postpartum hemorrhage. Since launching in 2021, CEO Christine Rohan and her team have been raising funding to bring their technology through FDA approval, which she hopes to get by 2028, she told Technical.ly. 

“We want to make sure that we’re ready to deploy the technology as soon as it’s deemed safe by the FDA,” Rohan said. “We’re using existing wearables so there should be no patient safety risk. It’s simply validating with the FDA that this is a valid approach to identifying maternal risk.” 

The company created a proprietary index called the myometrial fatigue index that measures how fatigued a mother’s uterus becomes during labor. They found that there are certain heart rate patterns that occur when there are changes in the uterine muscle, according to Rohan. 

Vasowatch’s software, which works with any existing heart rate wearable and monitoring display, catches and reports those sequences, Rohan said. 

Providing this information to healthcare providers in a timely manner means that they can be more prepared to take action if bleeding does occur, which lessens the chance of the need for procedures like blood transfusions and emergency hysterectomies, Rohan said. 

Similar companies are working on tech to detect when hemorrhages are happening, but it’s not enough, according to Rohan, as maternal mortality rates in the US continue to be very high.

“[Vasowatch is] ultimately flexible, and it minimizes the amount of investment the hospital needs to make in the solution,” she said. 

Leaning on federal funding to de-risk 

Vasowatch spun out of the University of Pennsylvania by cofounders James Weimer, a computer scientist, and Stefanie Modri, a nurse with two decades of experience working in labor and delivery. 

After coming up with the idea to develop technology that stopped postpartum bleeding, the pair were sponsored by the Penn Center for Innovation and completed an observational study at Penn Medicine. Then, they brought Rohan onto the team to help commercialize the technology, she said.

They decided not to invent a new device, both because it wasn’t necessary and because it was more cost-efficient for hospitals, she said. But that led to some resistance from investors who had a harder time understanding the technology. 

There’s a fair amount of recognition from investors about the problem Vasowatch is trying to solve, Rohan said, but the funding process has still been slow. 

To fill that gap, the company looked to funding options from the federal government. 

Early on, the company secured Small Business Technology Transfer phase 1 funding to test feasibility. Vasowatch was in the middle of a Small Business Innovation Research phase 2 submission when the lapse in funding occurred, which left the company in limbo. 

“It was that lull where we’re ready to have the funding to test this out and there was no funding to be had,” she said. “Finding investors that will invest with this level of risk was challenging.” 

Friends and family, Ben Franklin Technology Partners and investment from a university partner ended up contributing to the company’s seed round, which will support a clinical pilot, she said. 

So far, it’s raised $750,000 toward a $1 million goal. 

Rohan hopes that interest from an angel investor will help complete the company’s round while they wait for the SBIR process to get back up and running. 

“[In a year] I’d love it if we could be in the middle of our pivotal trial, compiling data on this, lining up medtech vendors to distribute the software,” Rohan said, “well on our way to establishing a new industry standard in hemorrhage care.”