MedCity News: It’s Time for Technology to Lift Maternal Care

Summary

PeriGen’s CEO, Matthew Sappern, recently published an article in MedCity News titled “It’s Time for Technology to Lift Maternal Care“. The article discusses how the future of maternal care lies in systems and in technology that deliver clarity, not just more data — helping clinicians recognize risks early and augment clinical decision making. Preview the article below, and read the full article on medcitynews.com.

Preview the Article

In 15 years of working in women’s health, I’ve come to know that labor and delivery (L&D) clinicians and providers are some of the most committed caregivers in existence, but increasingly the most hamstrung by market forces and inadequate systems. We must lean on emerging technologies to augment care and fill dangerous gaps that are all too human.

It is not the obvious, dramatic saves that show these gaps in care. A rapidly deteriorating obstetric emergency is not difficult to recognize. In most cases, it does not go unnoticed – teams mobilize quickly, moving with speed and purpose to protect both mother and baby.

But that’s not how most adverse outcomes in childbirth develop.

More often, risk builds gradually, often unnoticed. Subtle, evolving fetal heart rate changes such as decreasing variability, increasing baseline, and increasing frequency, depth, and duration of decelerations – in isolation not concerning, but in aggregate a threat to the fetus. These warning signs are easy to overlook in the moment, but accumulate until the pattern becomes unmistakable and threatening. By then, the window to intervene may have narrowed or closed. It is in recognizing these small but compounding warning signs – signs which humans are not well equipped to track over time – where technology must do the heavy lifting.

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