A Yale spinout called Wavelet is using AI to monitor fetal brain activity in real time — a potential breakthrough in a field that has relied on the same imperfect technology since the 1960s.
Each year in the United States, more than 35,000 babies suffer brain injuries during birth.
A Connecticut startup is aiming to drastically reduce that number with a new device that uses artificial intelligence to monitor fetal brain activity — technology that has recently attracted $7 million in seed funding.
Wavelet — a Yale University spinout led by CEO Liz Golden and co-founded by researchers Dr. Jose Cortes-Briones and Dr. Emily Lee — is developing a noninvasive system that can monitor fetal brain waves in real time and help doctors identify when a baby may be in distress during pregnancy or labor.
The technology targets a longstanding gap in obstetrics: accurately identifying fetal distress without triggering unnecessary medical interventions.
Current monitoring relies largely on fetal heart rate tracking, a method introduced in the 1960s. While widely used, it is known to produce false positives, which can contribute to higher cesarean section rates without clear improvements in neonatal outcomes.
And because it does not directly measure brain activity, it can also miss genuine cases of distress, increasing the risk of injury.
Wavelet’s approach aims to provide a more direct measure of fetal brain activity, potentially giving clinicians clearer information during labor and reducing uncertainty in high-stakes decisions.
A pregnant patient wearing the Wavelet device. Contributed Photo
The business implications are significant. Birth-related brain injuries can result in death, permanent disability, much higher lifetime health care costs, as well as over $3 billion in annual malpractice suits.
The company is now moving from research toward commercialization. Its device is being tested in clinical trials involving about 300 patients at sites including Yale, LA General Medical Center and Yonsei University Hospital in South Korea.
Initial trial data is expected later this year.
Wavelet has also begun engaging with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration through a pre-submission process, which could help speed the regulatory process once clinical trial data is available.
In April, Wavelet raised $7 million from New York City venture capital firm Aegis Ventures, which is backing the company as it works to generate clinical data and pursue regulatory approval.
“The future of health care is anticipatory,” said Murray Brozinsky, a partner at Aegis and now executive chair of Wavelet’s board. “There are few missions more important than making birth safer”
From lab research to startup
The idea behind Wavelet grew out of an unexpected line of research.
For most of his career, Cortes-Briones, a Yale psychiatry professor, studied the effects of psychoactive drugs. In 2018, he conducted research in Jamaica with Rastafarian believers, for whom cannabis use is a cultural and religious practice, including during pregnancy.
He set out to determine whether maternal cannabis use could be detected in the brain activity of a fetus.
At the time, that wasn’t possible.
Fetal brain signals exist, but they are overwhelmed by other biological activity inside the body — including the mother’s heartbeat — making them difficult to isolate without invasive methods.
Cortes-Briones believed artificial intelligence, with its superior pattern-recognition abilities, could help filter out that background noise and produce a clear reading of fetal brain activity.
When he realized he might have a technology that worked, he reached out to Yale’s obstetrics unit to see if it might be of interest.
He partnered with Lee, then an obstetrics fellow, who said the field had been trying to solve the problem of measuring fetal brain waves since the 1970s. Together, they secured about $1 million in National Institutes of Health funding, along with additional private support, to take the research further.
What’s resulted is a device worn as a band around the mother’s abdomen that captures electrical signals and uses software to isolate patterns associated with the fetus’ brain activity, helping clinicians identify signs of distress in real time.
Golden, Wavelet’s CEO, was later brought in through Yale Ventures, the university’s startup incubator, to help commercialize the technology. An entrepreneur-in-residence there, she has worked in the medical device industry, including at Medtronic, and has experience launching new companies.
She said the limitations of current monitoring methods represent a significant challenge in maternal care.
“The pain point is huge,” Golden says. “We have a maternal mortality and morbidity crisis in the U.S. In the developed world, the United States is the least safe place to have a baby.”
After partnering with Cortes-Briones and Lee, she quickly recognized the technology’s potential.
“There’s billions of dollars worth of opportunity, and you can save millions of lives globally: this is venture-backable,” she said.
Her interest in the problem is also personal.
During her own pregnancy, Golden said a fetal heart rate monitor incorrectly suggested her baby was in distress, prompting doctors to recommend a cesarean section before she ultimately delivered without complications.
“But it was extremely scary, extremely stressful,” she says now.
Clinical potential
Beyond labor and delivery, the company is also exploring how the technology can be used earlier in pregnancy to assess brain development and identify potential abnormalities.
The company’s near-term focus is on completing clinical trials and advancing through the regulatory process.
For Cortes-Briones, seeing his idea come to life as a startup company is eye-opening.
“For me, it was just research at the beginning,” he said. “I didn’t see the clinical potential until I started working with Emily. If it was not for Emily and Liz, this would have been in a drawer for real.”
