$39.3M ARPA-H grant awarded to team that includes CMU, Pitt, UPMC, MWRI

PITTSBURGH — A multi-institution team has been awarded up to $39.3 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, and it includes some notable local organizations.

The team is led by Carnegie Mellon University and its College of Engineering, and its membership includes institutions such as the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC and Magee-Womens Research Institute. Together, the team is working to develop a system called OMEGA, or Optical, Mechanical, and Electrical Global Assessment of fetal hypoxia — aiming to better identify fetal distress and enable safer labor and delivery experiences for both mothers and babies.

According to a release from CMU, the standard of care for determining if a baby is in distress during labor and delivery has not changed much in several decades. The OMEGA project aims to develop a system that looks at both the fetus as well as measuring contributing factors from the mother to pinpoint why fetal hypoxia is happening during labor rather than just if it is happening. The wearable system will be developed to monitor blood pressure, oxygenation, heart rate, vascular function, contractions, blood flow and brain function.