What if the United States was the safest place in the world to have a baby? 

The Problem

• The United States has the highest rate of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality of any wealthy country, despite spending more per capita on maternal care.
• This unacceptable status quo is largely the result of a 50-year-old, imprecise tool used during labor and delivery to monitor babies and determine whether they are getting enough oxygen—a tool called the fetal electronic monitor.  
• Without reliable data, confusion prevails and it’s tough to make smart, informed decisions. Women end up having unnecessary cesarean sections and babies are born with low oxygen levels, which sometimes cause lifelong complications.  
• This confusion leads to the dissolution of trust between patients and the medical system, massive lawsuits, and ultimately can cause medical providers to quit obstetrics, exacerbating the healthcare provider shortage.   

The Solution

• The Making Obstetrics Care Smart (MOCS) program aims to address this combination of problems by developing technology to help families and care teams plan for and have safe deliveries.  
• Our goal is ambitious: use advanced diagnostics and smart technology to make births safe. The program seeks to generate tools to predict both chronic and acute fetal status and provide the best recommendations for intervention, giving peace of mind to the care providers, mothers, and families making choices for critical labor and delivery care.
• MOCS will develop better ways to track a baby’s status during labor. First, developing a new test that will assess the health of the placenta to understand which patients are at high risk for complications during labor. Second, designing new types of noninvasive, wireless sensors and AI-backed technology to gain real-time information about a baby’s oxygen levels and make smart decisions during delivery.    
• If successful, MOCS will enable safe deliveries for all, drastically improving the health of women and children.   

Only ARPA-H can... 

• Ignite innovation in a field that has been stagnant for 50 years.  
• Push past technical challenges that have limited investment in noninvasive fetal monitoring.
• Convene the best researchers and collaborators in labor and delivery, including healthcare providers, hospitals, payers, attorneys, and families.
• Replace iterative improvements with data-driven maternity care that will make every birth safe.