On the 26th of September 2018, Dorien Lanssens held her public defense of her doctoral dissertation entitled: ‘A remote monitoring follow-up program for women with gestational hypertensive disorders: The midwife in the pocket’. This doctoral thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Wilfried Gyselaers (promotor), dr. Lars Grieten (copromotor) and dr. Ir. Inge M Thijs (copromotor).
Research into pregnant women at risk for gestational hypertensive disorder was performed, mainly on how to improve the follow- using remote monitoring of these women during pregnancy and how to reduce pre-term birth. Women participating in this study (i.e. PREMOM) were asked to perform two blood pressure measurements a day, one weight measurement a week and to wear an activity tracker continuously. All data was send via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to the midwife in the hospital remotely, who daily checked the parameters. When an alert (default) occurred (e.g. high blood pressure), the midwife contacted the responsible gynecologist, and necessary interventions (e.g. 24h urine collection, additional in-hospital monitoring) where planned/conducted.
The most important findings of this four years of research were: women with remote monitoring were, compared to women without remote monitoring, more likely to have better pregnancy outcomes, to have neonates with a better life start, and cost the health care system less.