ARPA-H committed $90.7 million over four years through its Making Obstetrics Care Smart (MOCS) program to speed point-of-care diagnostics and monitoring approaches designed to improve childbirth safety. The funding begins June 16 and targets interventions to identify patients at high risk for fetal hypoxia—reduced fetal oxygen delivery—during pregnancy and labor. Projects include a UC San Diego-led team developing a point-of-care blood test using fetal and maternal proteins, nucleic acids, and extracellular vesicles, with industry collaborators Sera Prognostics and Allegro MicroSystems supporting biomarker discovery and evaluation. Separately, investigators at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University (Jim Collins) plan a microfluidic device to capture fetal/placental extracellular vesicles and analyze mRNA signatures to predict fetal hypoxia risk. The program also supports an autonomous wearable ultrasound approach from a UNC Charlotte team to assess placental health during labor without a dedicated ultrasound technician, alongside noninvasive wireless monitoring concepts integrating fetal heart rate, contraction metrics, and AI-driven analytics to estimate real-time oxygenation.