“Sibel Health was spun out of Northwestern University and founded from an initial grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation given our commitment to maternal neonatal health. We’re proud to come full circle to take that initial investment and expand our potential for impact. Losing a single mother while giving birth is one too many. Vital signs are vital—and every pregnant person deserves to have their vitals checked,” said Steve Xu MD, CEO and Co-Founder of Sibel Health. “We’re looking forward to adding AI-driven clinical decision support and point of care ultrasound to this platform to go well beyond monitoring in the near future .” Sibel Health, founded in 2018, has been committed to maternal health innovation being recognized by the Health Resources and Services Administration as a Phase 2 winner in their Remote Pregnancy Monitoring Grand Challenge, and most recently a finalist in the NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology (RADx® Tech) for Maternal Health Challenge.
Since 2016, progress in reducing global obstetrical mortality has stalled. Currently, the goal of meeting the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of reducing maternal mortality rate to fewer than 70 out of 100,000 births is at risk. Globally, 800 women die every day in pregnancy or childbirth with the majority of these deaths being completely preventable with early detection by vital signs monitoring. In the U.S., maternal mortality has increased in the last 10 years, with black women having 3 times the risk of death compared to white women.
The University of Edinburgh is a global institution that co-leads the NIHR Global Surgery Unit. The Global Surgery Unit holds the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest biomedical collaboration ever—and will collaborate closely with Sibel Health to develop and deploy advanced maternal monitoring in 3 initial target geographies—India, Pakistan, and Nigeria. “As experts in implementing complex interventions and conducting large-scale clinical trials, we look forward to working with Sibel Health in this critical effort” said Professor Ewen Harrison, Professor of Surgery and Data Science at the University of Edinburgh, Consultant Hepatobiliary and Transplant Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and co-lead of the NIHR Global Surgery Unit. Dr. Rosie Townsend, Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Consultant Obstetrician at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, added “the need for vital signs monitoring is clear in maternal health for low resource settings, this is an opportunity to deliver a potentially life-saving solution.”
Most recently, the Gates Foundation has invested more than $100 million dollars in bringing point of care ultrasound to LMICs for maternal health. This work extends into advanced continuous vital signs monitoring engaging leading experts based in Nigeria (Doctors Opeyemi Akinajo, Bosede Afolabi, and Adesoji Ademuyiwa), Pakistan (Doctors Zahra Hoodbhoy, Imran Nisar, and Fyezah Jehan), and India (Doctors Dhruva Ghosh and Kavita Mandrelle Bhatti) as equal partners.
About Sibel Health:
Sibel Health is an award-winning digital health company with a mission to deliver Better Health Data for All®. Based in Chicago with an international office in Seoul, the company’s FDA-cleared ANNE® platform includes advanced wearable sensors, AI-enabled data analytics, and an integrated mobile software and cloud platform. Sibel has partnerships with some of the most respected healthcare organizations worldwide. For more information, please visit us at www.sibelhealth.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
SOURCE Sibel Health
