North Andover, Mass.-based startup MindChild Medical landed a research partnership with Oxford University dedicated to developing signal processing software with MindChild’s Meridian, a non-invasive fetal heart rate data monitor.
In September, the FDA cleared MindChild’s Meridian, which can detect tiny fluctuations in fetal heartbeats and potentially reduce the number of Caesarean sections pregnant women undergo.
The company plans to launch the product in the U.S. with additional pre-market regulatory filings in 2013, according to a press release.
Dr. Gari Clifford, co-founder of the company who is also a faculty member in the department of engineering science at the University of Oxford, will lead the research project. Clifford is also a principal research scientist in the Laboratory for Computational Physiology at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences.
“I have spent the majority of my academic career developing innovative signal processing approaches which lend themselves to fetal and maternal monitoring. Having participated in the development of the Meridian software design, I am gratified to continue the evolution of this important clinical technology under the auspices of Oxford,” Clifford said in prepared remarks. “The sponsored research agreement will enable my group to continue the collaboration between industry and academia, which began at MIT.”
MindChild was founded in 2008 a collaboration between Tufts Medical Center, MIT and E-Trolz Inc.