# A novel mobile phone technology to improve access for preeclampsia and hypertension detection

> **NIH NIH R43** · TELE-STETHOSCOPE INC. · 2024 · $292,897

## Abstract

Project Summary / Abstract
Preeclampsia is a complication affecting 2 – 8% of all pregnancies and results in significant
maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. The invention to be researched in this grant
detects preeclampsia and hypertension in patients with the phones that they already own. It
improves outcomes by increasing access to care among underserved populations and
monitoring frequency among high risk patients. Patients record themselves using their own
phones which takes only a few minutes. The long term objective is to commercialize a product
which enables any of 7 billion phones to assist in preeclampsia or gestational hypertension
detection.
The invention is intended to be used at home by patients via a phone app with results sent to
the prescribing obstetrician (OB). The purpose is to alert the OB if immediate physical
examination is needed and to initiate possible preeclampsia management protocol. In these
situations, there are no other comparable testing options.
The invention includes both improvements to clinical practice and to science. Current clinical
practice standard of care requires patients to be examined in an OB office. The invention
allows preeclampsia and hypertension to be detected via patient self-examination from
locations outside the OB office. This improves upon current technology such as home blood
pressure cuffs and in-office dipstick urinalysis. In terms of improvements to science, the
invention consists of both a Universal Translator (UT) and Deductive Intelligence (DI). UT
allows for any mobile phone to capture body acoustic data. DI is a novel physics based
approach to creating classifier algorithms from passively received time series data, such as
mobile phone recordings received from the UT. The invention analyzes hemodynamics and
extracts pertinent physics based features from which a classifier algorithm is based.
This will be the third large scale human study that demonstrates classification of cardio -
pulmonary functionality. It follows a published study on COVID detection as well as a study
under peer review on the ability to reproduce echocardiogram estimates of ejection fraction.
The echocardiogram study establishes the protocol to be used in the proposed research. In
a recent preliminary study, 46 pregnant women were recorded at the aortic site. The resulting
model was able to determine which patients had high blood pressure and to accurately
determine which patients had complications. These studies support our hypothesis that
acoustic hemodynamic data captured by OEM phone microphones, at the aortic auscultation
site and at the upper arm, can be used to identify patients who have preeclampsia and/or
hypertension.
The study has two primary aims. The first is to demonstrate proof of concept that the invention
enables ordinary mobile phones to reproduce physicians’ diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. The
second aim is to demonstrate proof of concept that the invention enables ordinary mobile
phones...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10821706
- **Project number:** 1R43HL172484-01
- **Recipient organization:** TELE-STETHOSCOPE INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** John conrad Heironimus
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $292,897
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-20 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10821706

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10821706, A novel mobile phone technology to improve access for preeclampsia and hypertension detection (1R43HL172484-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10821706. Licensed CC0.

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