Can big data and computer-based analysis help in the quest to prevent oxygen starvation of babies during childbirth?

Oxygen starvation during labour at term causes each year, in the UK alone, over 1200 healthy babies to sustain brain injury. High-risk labours are monitored continuously with the cardiotocogram (CTG), which displays the womb’s contractions and the baby’s heart rate. Reliable and actionable continuous fetal monitoring has the potential to halve this number. At Oxford, we store and analyse all routinely performed CTGs, linked to detailed clinical data for both mother and baby, since 1993. Dr Georgieva will discuss her team’s progress towards developing a bed-side decision support tool, based on the data, designed to substantially improve fetal health’s assessment during labour.