Building the Internet of Things platform for smart maternal healthcare services with wearable devices and cloud computing

In recent years, the industry of wearable devices for pregnancies has been developing rapidly. The devices ranges from foetal monitors to multi-functional health examination instruments, which helped monitoring and management of maternal health indicators such as foetal heart rate, blood glucose, and blood pressure in home. Pregnant women and obstetricians are bounded together by wearable devices in an unprecedented way. With the universal use of the Internet of Things technology, the Smart Maternal construction started to raise people's attention. This article proposes an Internet of Things platform for smart maternal healthcare services with wearable devices and cloud computing and the key technologies. We also investigate its applications, and monitoring and management modes in home for obstetrics departments in hospitals. The Smart Maternal platform, which is based on the Internet of Things and centres on pregnant women, is able to greatly mitigate the workload of medical staffs, increase the work efficiency, facilitate the pregnant women to go to the doctors and improve the quality of obstetrical treatment. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.