Oli is a wearable sensor designed to show how safely pregnancy and labour is progressing. By translating the lived experience of mothers into hard data, it provides clinicians with insights they can act on.
The idea for Oli was born from a deeply personal experience. Founder Dr Sarah McDonald endured a traumatic labour, knowing something wasn’t right. Despite her instincts, the obstetric monitor showed nothing unusual.
Determined that no other mother should have to go through the same experience, Sarah set out to turn lived experience into actionable data. A key benefit that Oli offers is quantifying the gap between what mothers feel and what clinicians see on monitors.
A NSW parliamentary inquiry published in 2024 highlighted the frequency of inadequate maternity care, with one in three Australian women experiencing birth trauma.
RACGP: Birth trauma inquiry
Sarah’s first prototype was developed through her PhD, as a wireless sensor that sits on a mother’s stomach, monitoring both mother and baby. She ran an 86-patient clinical trial with an early Oli device as proof of concept. By thinking differently and through the lens of lived experience - Sarah reframed the problem and created a novel approach to monitoring labour. Oli’s data gathered in this trial and the knowledge of birth complications showed Sarah she was on the right track.
Tara Croft, CEO of Baymatob and also a mentor for our AUSCEP program, has extensive medtech commercialisation experience, having scaled multiple early-stage health businesses. Leveraging and building on Sarah’s dataset, Tara has now built a digital platform that uses AI as an enhancement tool.
Oli has now progressed to a wearable sensor that can predict post-partum haemorrhage (PPH), with clinical evidence and data to detect up to 15 different maternal and foetal complications.
Every 7 minutes, a woman dies from PPH worldwide.
In 2024, Baymatob ran a commercial simulation with Oli across multiple clinical teams and market segments. Results were significant:
While Oli has evidence for 15 use cases, the first product to launch targets postpartum haemorrhage (PPH), where the need is most urgent.
Oli provides a minimum of one hour's warning, with the earliest prediction recorded at nine hours before haemorrhage onset. This transforms outcomes, giving clinicians the time to prepare drugs, devices, and interventions proactively instead of reacting in crisis.
Because Oli operates in life-and-death scenarios, the device uses a measured, safety-first approach to AI:
Unlike some monitoring technologies that restrict mobility or limit birthing options, Oli supports choice and autonomy. Clinicians and parents were engaged early in development to ensure usability in real-world settings, as well as respecting women’s choices in birth.
It does this by being non-invasive, having design features such as effective waterproofing – allowing transmission and movement during water delivery, or showers for pain relief – and being user-friendly within clinical workflows – giving clinicians the time to respond and engage preventative measures over reactive actions.
Oli is currently in a pivotal clinical trial - the final step before FDA and TGA regulatory submissions.
There are 1,000 patients being enrolled (large by medical device standards; many studies include <100 patients) across Royal North Shore Hospital (St Leonards), Royal Hospital for Women (Randwick) in Sydney and a number of US-based locations.
The trial, launched in August 2025, is expected to finish by mid-2026. Once results are analysed, Baymatob will submit Oli for regulatory approval in Australia and the US. A Series A capital raise remains open to support this next stage of growth.
Oli can help solve difficult access to maternal health facilities that are all too prevalent in rural and regional Australia but also the world.
Oli can be used at home and in community maternity clinics which is crucial to providing care to women living in remote areas in Australia, where they can be hours from their closest maternity departments.
Not just within Australia but globally, Oli could transform the experience of labour for women in remote communities. The device cloud connects, working like a digital triage, allowing low-risk women to stay in their communities and highlighting those who need to go to hospital.
By bridging the gap between lived experience and clinical data, Oli has the potential to reshape maternal healthcare making a woman’s labour safer, improving outcomes, and giving women and clinicians the tools they need when time matters most.
Oli has been granted Breakthrough Device Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As a leading product aiming to identify individuals who are at higher risk of developing postpartum hemorrhage well before they give birth, Oli has the potential to reshape maternal healthcare making labour safer, improve outcomes, and giving women and clinicians the tools they need when time matters most.
As Baymatob advances the development of Oli, CEO Tara Croft continues to share her commercialisation journey with participants in the AUSCEP program. Mentoring is a cornerstone of clinician-entrepreneur training, and access to experienced experts like Tara helps guide participants, fast-track learnings, and ultimately save valuable time in bringing innovations to life.
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