OREANDA-NEWS. Monitoring expectant mothers and their babies before and during childbirth is a vital and at times a complicated task. GE Healthcare is investing in innovations to make it easier. Today, GE Healthcare announced that it is expanding its Maternal-Infant Care business with the acquisition of Monica Healthcare, a monitoring technology company based in the United Kingdom. This acquisition (price not disclosed) enhances GE Healthcare’s mobile and digital offerings by providing clinicians and patients around the world with more innovative solutions for labor, delivery, and home care.

Monica Healthcare is a 12-year-old private company dedicated to improving the birth experience and enhancing obstetric care through wearable wireless fetal monitoring devices. Monica Healthcare’s advanced fetal monitors already empower midwives, labor and delivery nurses, and expectant women at approximately 1,000 sites across Europe, Asia and North America – with more than 100,000 patients impacted just last year.

"At GE Healthcare, we are committed to improving the health care experience across care areas, including childbirth," says Tammy Noll, General Manager of GE Healthcare’s Maternal-Infant Care division. "Through this acquisition, we will combine the incredible expertise and mobile-digital innovation from the Monica team with GE Healthcare’s longstanding industry leadership and customer focus – all with the goal of bettering maternal and infant care for patients worldwide."

Since 2015, GE Healthcare has been Monica’s North American distribution partner for the Novii™ Wireless Patch System – a single-patient use patch that effectively monitors maternal heart rate, fetal heart rate, and uterine activity, even on many of the most difficult to monitor patients. The Novii patch communicates through Bluetooth wirelessly to the fetal monitor, providing patients with greater mobility in labor. To learn more about the Novii patch, watch the video here.

"Joining GE Healthcare provides a fantastic opportunity to bring together Monica’s digital offerings with GE Healthcare’s global infrastructure to provide even stronger capabilities and solutions to customers around the world," said Carl Barratt, CEO of Monica Healthcare.

GE Healthcare Maternal Infant Care offers neuro-developmental and family-centered solutions across maternal/fetal monitors, infant warmers, infant resuscitation systems, phototherapy, incubators and combination beds – helping to send moms and babies home healthy. GE Healthcare is also the global industry leader for prenatal ultrasound, with more than 230 million expectant mothers using GE Healthcare ultrasound every year.