Pleasant pregnancies with palpable IT

In the application area “Pregnancy and Maternity” PalCom’s researchers work both to develop a palpable system that will make the nine months of pregnancy more relaxed and enjoyable for the expectant mother and her family

Maria is 12 weeks pregnant and has just had her first ultra sound scan a few days ago. Her parents are visiting and she wants to show them the pictures. From her purse, she takes a small device and brings it to the living room. The connection from the device to her TV is wireless and Maria says aloud: “Display pictures from my first ultra sound.” On the screen appears a slide show with the very first pictures of her baby.

Enjoying maternity

The purpose of PalCom’s pregnancy device is two-fold:

  • On the one hand, it aims to improve communication between healthcare professionals and to ensure more time for patient care.
  • Secondly, it helps to make the nine months of maternity more enjoyable for the expectant mother. If she adds functions such as a diary or a photo/video album, the stone also stores her personal memories of the pregnancy.

And being a palpable system, it is of course easy to connect to a laptop, TV or mobile phone so that the expectant mother can share pictures and information with her family.

Palpable storage

The core of the work within this application area is to develop a so called storage component; a way to store and retrieve information that is easy to grasp. The idea is that it will be easier for pregnant women and other users to understand how they can retrieve information if the database works the same way their brains work, namely by way of meanings and associations.

For example, if a user asks, “Is my blood pressure normal?”, then the device will find the last measurement in her medical journal, search a medical database for the figure that is normal for pregnant women and finally compare the two, she explains.

Contact details

Morten Kyng
Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Aarhus
Aabogade 34
8200 Aarhus N
Denmark
Phone: +45 8942 5715
Email:mkyng(at)daimi.au.dk 


Konrad Tollmar
Associate Professor
Department of Informatics University of Lund
Ole Römers Väg 6
22363 Lund
Sweden
Phone: +46 046 2224975
E-mail: konrad.tollmar(at)ics.lu.se

Last Modified: 25 September 2007, © PalCom