Israeli medical experts from Nuvo Group have developed a wearable mobile monitor to keep a close watch on pregnant women and their fetuses as they go about their everyday lives, Reuters is reporting. Called PregSense monitor, the Bluetooth-enabled device comes with sensors woven into an elastic harness to provide data around the clock on the status of the fetus as well as the mother’s health in the later stages of pregnancy.

The device would collect the mother and baby’s heart rates and then beamed the data to a connected smartphone and/or to the cloud from where physicians would be able to access it. This in turn would reassure anxious mothers, who require monitoring without having to see her doctor. Additionally, the data could also be useful for clinicians and researchers.

The consumer version of the product, known as Ritmo Beats, is expected be launched by the end of 2015 and will cost around $250.“What you are going to get in the app eventually is visualization that can tell you where the hand is, you’re going to see if the baby is awake, you can hear your baby’s heartbeat anytime you want and obviously everything about you as the mom, the activity, if you are relaxed, how you sleep, your activity, your heart activity, everything about your pregnancy will be put into data,” Nuvo Group’s CEO Oren Oz explained as he demonstrated the device.

Unlike traditional doppler devices, the PregSense monitor does not use ultrasound; rather, it relies on a patented algorithm to filter the signals it picks up into two heartbeat recordings. According to Nuvo Group, these passive sensors avoid the potential harm to tissue posed by ultrasonic devices and are perfectly safe for both the mother and baby during continuous monitoring.

Oz said doctors would appreciate not having to use traditional heavy machinery, such as the cardiotocography (CTG) or electronic fetal monitor (EFM) machines to trace the fetal heartbeat. Instead, they could track and diagnose patients remotely, allowing quick detection and intervention.

“The immediate impact, the immediate benefit to doctors is that we are replacing the bulky CTG machines which are heavy and connected to the wall with the light weight mobility and continuous monitoring.” he added.

The consumer version of the product, known as Ritmo Beats, is expected be launched by the end of 2015 and will cost around $250. The clinical grade, FDA-regulated device has a 2016 launch target.