Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Maternal mortality continues to claim hundreds of thousands of lives each year, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries where continuous prenatal monitoring infrastructure is severely limited. This paper presents MOM’s Care — a proof-of-concept, wearable Internet of Things (IoT) prototype framework for maternal and fetal health monitoring, integrated with an Android mobile application. The proposed prototype continuously captures maternal parameters including heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂), and body temperature, alongside fetal indicators such as kick count, fetal movement patterns, and fetal cardiac activity. Sensor data from a custom wearable smart belt are transmitted via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to a companion Android application and optionally synchronized to a Firebase cloud backend for longitudinal access by healthcare providers. The application provides real-time visualization dashboards, historical health records, automated risk alerts using a formalized rule-based decision model, and multi-recipient push notifications. A simulation-based prototype was developed using Android SDK, SQLite Room ORM, BLE communication, and MPAndroidChart, and evaluated using realistic simulated physiological datasets generated from published pregnancy health parameter distributions. This study focuses on demonstrating functional feasibility and prototype performance rather than clinical validation, which is planned as the immediate next phase of research. The preliminary evaluation demonstrates the potential of low-cost wearable frameworks as supplementary monitoring tools to support prenatal care accessibility in rural and resource-constrained environments, pending formal clinical trials under medical supervision.</p>