My Baby’s Beat

Disease Category:
Target Audience:
Not Recommended
Clinical Effectiveness
1
Functionality
0
Usability
0
10
Version: 2.92
Developer: Matis
Review Date: 2016-04-20
Cost: $4.99
App Categories:
Functionality:

Overall App Summary:

My Baby’s Beat mobile app has no clinical relevance or credibility and should not be used by pregnant women. There is no evidence that the app actually records baby’s heart beats accurately. The app turns the smartphone microphone into a highly sensitive recording device, enabling the recording of various sound emanating from the mother, namely bowel sounds and perhaps, maternal heart rate. It is not a reliable fetal heart rate monitor. In fact, this app could be dangerous in that it could give some pregnant women a false sense of security; or on the other hand, cause unnecessary anxiety when the fetus is actually doing just fine. It is quite shocking that the app costs $4.99 for download and use, considering its lack of clinical credibility and lack of clinical relevance.

Reviewer(s)
Maulik Majmudar

Dr. Maulik Majmudar is a practicing cardiologist and Associate Director of the Healthcare Transformation Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital; and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He lectures at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in areas of healthcare innovation & entrepreneurship, as well as medical device design and development. Dr. Majmudar started his career as a medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, completed resident training in Internal Medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and followed by a fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. You can follow him @mmajmudar

Conflicts of Interest:

Employment: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Consultant/ Advisor: AliveCor, BioFourmis, Cardiogram, EchoSense, Facebook, HUINNO, MC10, Nokia; Ownership: BioFourmis, Cardiogram, HiLabs, Quanttus; Research: EchoSense, GE Healthcare, MIT.

Adam Cohen

Dr. Adam B. Cohen, a Michigan native, is a neurologist & neuro-ophthalmologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is the Neurology Inpatient Medical Director and TeleNeurology Co-Director. He focuses on process innovation, digital health, and improving the efficiency of specialty health care delivery.

Conflicts of Interest:

Employment: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Consultant/ Advisor: Decibel Therapeutics, EM Gladiators LLC; Ownership: Expertaj; Research: Academic only; no private funding.

Editor(s)