To Never Skip A Beat – The HeraBEAT Fetal Heart Monitor Review

Listening to the heart sounds of an unborn baby upon a visit at the doctor’s office is one of the most magical moments for parents to be.

What if you could do that in the comfort of your home? What if you could avoid anxious phone calls or hospital visits by having a digital device at hand? The HeraBEAT fetal heart monitor promises peace of mind for both expecting mothers and their family, so we tested its capabilities. Although improvements would be welcome in some areas, especially user education, the experience of eavesdropping on the baby’s heartbeat is unbeatable. Here’s our review.

The importance of offering peace of mind

The idea of HeraBEAT and various other products of Israel-based HeraMED were born out of Co-Founder and CEO David Groberman’s personal experiences. In 2011, he and his wife, Odelia, today parents to three children, experienced first-hand the overwhelming anxiety and stress which many pregnant couples face when concern for their unborn baby arises. One evening, Odelia, who was in her second trimester, realized she had not felt the baby for the whole day. After hours of trying to “wake up” the baby in vain, they decided to seek medical assistance. After hours of commute, administrative paperwork, and a long baby-monitoring procedure, they could finally get a doctor to glance at the results. He immediately said the baby was OK, and they could simply go home.

With this in mind, David became eager to do something to avoid this experience. He recognized the need for a smart device: so parents could have the assurance that their baby’s fetal heart signs are in the normal range – no matter whether they are at home, on holiday, or in a park enjoying the summer sun.

Later on, the HeraMED team sent us their first product, the HeraBEAT fetal heart monitor. As no one in the team is expecting a baby, we called for volunteers in our community to test it according to our review policy. A Hungarian medical student, Anna, who was 29-weeks pregnant and her husband, Greg, were more than happy to help. Now, let’s dive into the details of how the HeraBEAT performs!

Baby bump-adjusted design, but Bluetooth-connection troubles

When you open the box, you will find a pocket-sized, dumpling-like, aesthetically pleasing sensor, a hard case, a charger, two gel tubes, and a user manual. The sensor fits in your palm and it has a baby bump-adjusted design. Anna said that it was a good idea to have the gel in a smaller tube, as this way the transmission material can be dosed more precisely than it is usually done in a hospital setting in her experience.

After Anna and her husband, Greg, charged the device for four hours – the indicated charging time – and the green light was on, they immediately tried to pair it up with the accompanying app. However, it took them a while until they found a compatible phone in their family – both Anna’s and Greg’s smartphones proved to be unable to connect via Bluetooth with the HeraBEAT sensor, so they used a third phone instead. They tried to look up technical support on the company website, but they didn’t find it too helpful – the page could be much more user-friendly with more detailed and more easily available information on how to handle the sensor and the app, not just a note that if you download the app, everything’s going to be great.

Challenges of first-time usage

Anna and Greg diligently read through the manual before the first use of the sensor. They found the offline information concise and descriptive, especially due to its explanatory images. Based on the manual, it is also easy to understand what the light variations signal on the device. Now that the sensor was charged and paired with the app, the green light was on, Anna and her husband were eager to start the testing.

According to the company, HeraBEAT applies the conventional Ultrasound Doppler technology, yet it amplifies its accuracy and efficiency using a set of 21st-century hardware and software optimizations. It has a patent pending multisensory unit for measuring pregnancy and fetal heart rate. However, when we searched for scientific information or more data about the technology itself, the website was not particularly helpful, so that’s certainly an area for improvement: we recommend as many explanatory texts as possible.

When Anna and Greg tried the sensor, the first measurement didn’t go too well. Their little baby started to move around, and HeraBEAT didn’t produce results and didn’t indicate an error message. During the 20 minutes of measurement, they could only detect 5 seconds’ worth of heart sounds. Thus, on the following occasions they were careful to choose a period when the baby was more relaxed. In these time ranges, it was relatively easy to measure the fetal heart rate in the five-minute intervals.

The whole family gathers around the heartbeat

“Who doesn’t want to listen to the heart sounds of their little one? At times when we did the measurements, our entire family gathered around us”, Anna told enthusiastically to The Medical Futurist. She added that the registered heart sounds are automatically saved as short, 20-second recordings alongside a summary chart and an image about a long, detailed measurement. These can be shared in numerous ways, for example via Facebook Messenger, with family members or the doctor. Anna added that it is truly reassuring to have a device at home which can measure the baby’s pulse at once. If there’s any concern for the little one’s well-being, it only takes seconds to at least know that the child’s ticker is working.

Regarding the measurements themselves, our testers found that the values were in the normal range, and as a medical student, Anna said that the device even followed up nicely on physiological variability. On the other hand, Anna and her husband were able to “con” the sensor, meaning that they tried to measure their own heartbeat – and they were pleased to note that it did not show any frequencies corresponding to reality. However, they were surprised that the sensor did not send any notifications when it constantly detected 200 beats per minute (bpm). That’s one element where HeraBEAT has room for improvement.

Another little annoyance, which might only be a bug in the app’s software, was that it had to be restarted every time after having shared the measurements. After they looked at the detailed measurement results, the app wasn’t able to navigate back to the home page.

Excellent at-home experience, but user education needed

In conclusion, our testers found that the use and measurement procedure of HeraBEAT is effortless, the device and the app are well designed, user-friendly, and it’s an uplifting experience to measure a baby’s heart rate at home.

On the other hand, Anna mentioned that she wouldn’t mind more education about the measurements – even at a basic level. As an example, she mentioned how margins of tolerance can be looked up when someone uses a blood pressure cuff, and the device indicates too high or too low values, or if it senses problems in the heart rhythm. The Medical Futurist completely agrees: a patient-friendly company should support users on their journey to gain more knowledge about the specific measurements it provides.