Kelly Hulit checks her pregnancy tracking app for updates on her baby’s growth and development.Thomas Bollmann
For her third pregnancy, Kelly Hulit has gone digital.
Guided by a pregnancy tracking app, the Mississauga, Ont.-based nurse has turned weekly updates on her baby’s growth into a family tradition – with fruit as the measure.
“The app shows the baby’s size compared to a fruit or vegetable,” says Ms. Hulit, 37, who uses What to Expect, a popular pregnancy tracking app.
Like many women in Canada, she is part of a growing trend. According to Femtech Canada, a national network connecting Canadian tech companies focused on women’s health innovation, the country’s femtech sector is expected to contribute $27-billion to Canada’s GDP by 2040.
“At one point [the baby] was the size of a pineapple,” says Ms. Hulit, adding that the comparisons help her sons, 4 and 6, picture their sibling’s progress. She encourages them to guess the fruit each week, which often prompts comical answers from her youngest. “He’ll come up with something ridiculous that goes back in time, like a strawberry. It’s a really nice way for them to participate, and something that they get excited about.”
The What to Expect app is displaying a butternut squash that’s three-quartered outlined, indicating Kelly Hulit is 33 weeks into her pregnancy.Thomas Bollmann
Maternity health breakthroughs
Advances in technology have the power to mitigate some of the biggest challenges in pregnancy care, says Dr. Nir Melamed, an obstetrician and head of the Twins Research Centre at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
Earlier this year, Sunnybrook’s pregnancy care team began using a first-in-Canada device for measuring fetal heart rate. Already the standard of care in Europe, the computerized heart rate monitoring tool (cCTG) improves accuracy and confidence in decision-making, Dr. Melamed explains.
With cCTG, doctors can better time medical interventions, particularly for babies with growth restrictions. The data helps determine when early delivery is necessary to prevent stillbirth or when it’s safer to delay intervention until the baby is stronger.
“Computerized CTG essentially looks like a regular monitor, but it’s supplemented by special software,” says Dr. Melamed. “We see many cases where physicians were otherwise uncertain on how to interpret the monitor visually, and now that you get the number [from the cCTG], it really provides reassurance.”
Another concern is preterm birth, or births occurring at less than 37 weeks’ gestation, which carry serious implications for both mothers and babies. In 2023, Canada’s premature birth rate hit 8.3 per cent, the highest in 50 years according to Statistics Canada. The rate decreased slightly to 8.2 per cent in 2024.
Together with biomedical physicist Dr. Christine Démoré and fetal medicine specialist Dr. Ori Nevo, Dr. Melamed is developing a new ultrasound probe that looks beyond cervical length, currently the main predictor of preterm birth risk, to detect subtler structural changes.
“Just looking at the length is not accurate enough. There are now new technologies under development that try to detect all kinds of microstructural changes in the cervix,” says Dr. Melamed, explaining that the goal is detection of changes that cannot be interpreted using the naked eye.
Augmented at-home monitoring
Access to clinical care remains another challenge for expectant parents in Canada, says Dr. Melamed. “The biggest transformation that technology can allow us is what I call ‘bringing the clinic to the patient rather than the patient to the clinic,’” he says.
The current model of care requires patients to see their doctor every four weeks early on, and every two weeks after 28 weeks’ gestation. “That’s a huge burden on patients,” says Dr. Melamed. “They have to miss workdays, organize child care, pay for parking… it’s a big issue.”
Dr. Melamed envisions a centralized model of remote and in-person care, with at-home monitoring devices to lessen the need for frequent in-person clinic visits.
The biggest transformation that technology can allow us is what I call ‘bringing the clinic to the patient rather than the patient to the clinic.’
— Dr. Nir Melamed, obstetrician, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Dolma Tsundu, founder and chief executive officer of Canadian femtech company Flutter Care, is developing an at-home wearable that tracks fetal movement patterns. She says having this data at home can help expectant parents improve communication with providers and make informed decisions, such as when to seek medical attention.
“Sometimes people can’t easily articulate what they’ve been experiencing,” says Ms. Tsundu, adding that a tool that tracks these patterns can strengthen communication and the relationship between patients and their health-care providers.
Ms. Hulit says she has already seen the value of health data, thanks to an Oura ring, which she has worn since before her pregnancy. When her quality of sleep was affected by pregnancy, and more recently when she came down with a cold, the data confirmed what she was feeling.
“You don’t feel well, and your ring is actually telling you that you’re showing major signs of stress on your body and to take it easy,” she says. “It’s nice to know, ‘Okay, I’m not just being a baby.’”