Johns Hopkins Students Develop Technology to Help Prevent Premature Births

This computer graphic shows the cervical ring and sensors. In the actual prototype, the extended ring is about 50 mm diam.

Graduate students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA, have developed a sensor-based cervical ring that could pick up very early signs that a woman is going into labour too soon. By detecting preterm contractions with greater accuracy and sensitivity than existing tools, the new system could allow doctors to take steps at an earlier stage to prevent premature births, notes a press release issued by the university.

Made of medical-grade biocompatible silicone elastomer, the CervoCheck device is designed to be compressed and inserted into the patient’s vaginal canal at a physician’s office or hospital. Sensors embedded within the ring pick up electrical signals associated with uterine contractions.

Physicians have long relied on a tocodynamometer, a belt that is attached to a woman’s abdomen for external monitoring of uterine contractions. But this device is not effective at picking up preterm labour early in a pregnancy or in cases where the patient is obese.

“With these sensors [embedded in the cervical ring], we’re detecting signals directly from the places in the body where they originate, as opposed to trying to pick them up through the abdominal wall,” said Chris Courville, one of the students involved in the project.

The Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students who helped develop the CervoCheck system are pictured. From left: Karin Hwang, Chris Courville, Deepika Sagaram and Rose Huang. Photo courtesy of the University of Louisville Brown-Forman Cardinal Challenge Business Plan Competition.

The prototype has not yet been used on human patients, but the students say their early animal test results are promising and that improvement of the system is continuing. Working with the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer office, the students and faculty advisor Abimbola Aina-Mumuney, Assistant Professor of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, have obtained a provisional patent covering their invention and established CervoCheck LLC.

The students also have received high marks and prize money in several competitions in which the viability of their device and its sales potential were judged. The team placed first in the University of California, San Francisco, Business Plan Competition; won second-place honours in business plan contests sponsored by the University of Texas at Arlington and Noetic Technologies, and placed third in the University of Louisville Cardinal Challenge and the Johns Hopkins University Business Plan Competition. Two of the graduate students have opted to work full-time on moving the CervoCheck device toward commercial use.

Tags: cervical ring, CervoCheck, Johns Hopkins, premature births, Sensors