For pregnant women, when they have to wear a delivery monitoring device all the time, such as when they are given a labor-inducing drug during childbirth, with conventional devices, they have to call the nurse and ask her to remove the device every time they go to the bathroom. Our iCTG, on the other hand, is fully wireless, so you can go to the bathroom without leaving it on. This has made life much easier for both pregnant women and nurses. ......
It is also a major advance in terms of price, and can be installed for about half the price of a conventional wireless calving monitoring device.
The Great East Japan Earthquake made me realize the necessity of telemedicine
Editor: What was the impetus for bringing this product to the world?
Kono：It was the Great East Japan Earthquake. At the time, the president of Melody International and I were the president and employees of a company that made electronic medical records for obstetrics and gynecology. At the time of the earthquake, we witnessed situations where delivery monitoring equipment was out of service, and even if data was measured by the delivery monitoring equipment, there were no obstetricians or gynecologists on site. ...... Based on this experience, we decided to create our own devices and systems like "iCTG" and "Melody i".
Editor： So you saw a situation where "telemedicine" was desperately needed.
Kono: That's right. Incidentally, in response to a request from the doctors at the University of Tokyo who cooperated with us in the development of this product, who said, "We don't want to compromise on the development of this product because it's the last thing we want to do," our sensors are equipped with more than twice as many sensors as other companies' products of the same type. This makes it possible to measure the heart rate data of the fetus without interruption.
To eliminate the tragedies of childbirth, both in Japan and overseas.
Editor: Can you tell us about your future plans?
Kono： First of all, in Japan, we believe that once the Japanese legal system is revised, we will have an opportunity to greatly promote our products and services. For example, when a government agency hands out the Maternal and Child Health Handbook (MCH handbook), it can lend the iCTG to pregnant women at the same time, and build a system in which their family doctor can check the data. Since every pregnant woman receives the Maternal and Child Health Handbook, all pregnant women will receive the iCTG, and the price of the product could be reduced to 10,000 to 20,000 yen.
If this is realized, it will prevent the tragedy of ......, where a pregnant woman is taken to an ambulance just before giving birth and is not accepted anywhere. In fact, there are a surprisingly large number of pregnant women who do not have an obstetrician or gynecologist as their "family doctor" and do not receive regular checkups before giving birth, and when such patients are brought in by ambulance, general obstetrics and gynecology hospitals may find out only after the patient arrives that the birth requires advanced treatment that their hospital cannot provide. So they are forced to say, "All right. Therefore, they have no choice but to respond, "In case of emergency, please go to a higher-order hospital that can provide more advanced treatment," which leads to a lot of back-and-forth. However, if we have the iCTG data, we can determine whether a general obstetrics and gynecology hospital can handle the situation and say, "Don't worry. Please come to our hospital". We really want to reduce the number of ambulance calls to zero.
