Oxford Labour Monitoring
OUR MISSiON
Oxford Labour Monitoring is committed to preventing injury of babies during labour and delivery, caused by lack of oxygen in utero - rare but devastating events. Our work will potentially benefit families, clinicians and healthcare systems by reducing brain injuries, the deaths of babies during labour or after birth and unnecessary medical interventions in childbirth.
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Lorraine Pryce
OUR APPROACH
Our multidisciplinary research is focused on determining the relationship between fetal heart rate and fetal health around the onset of and during labour, by analysing 'big' routinely collected datasets of maternity data. The goal is to provide much needed, data-driven software at the bedside to support clinical decisions when women are in labour.
©
Lorraine Pryce
Latest News
The Oxford Labour Monitoring team is mourning the sad loss of Professor Redman who passed away on the 13th August at the age of 82. He was a true pioneer, a great scientist, a visionary and a very patient man with a superb sense of humour.
Meet our team
The research relating to monitoring during labour is led by Professor Antoniya Georgieva. Our specialist team develops data-driven cardiotocography (CTG) systems/software to continuously assess fetal wellbeing at the onset of and during term labour. We are based at the John Radcliffe Hospital and at the Big Data Institute and collaborates with the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. The research is partially funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
| Associate Professor, Group Lead |
 | Clinical Research Fellow |
 | Expert Advisor and Patient Public Voice, co-founder of the Campaign for Safer Births |
 | Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust |
PUBLIC involvement
Oxford Labour Monitoring is committed to engaging the public in our work, by communicating what we do clearly and by putting women and families at the centre of our research. We call this Parent, Patient and Public Involvement (PPPI). Our PPPI strategy is led by Rachel Plachchinski and Charlotte Bevan with the support of Nicky Lyon, founder of the Campaign for Safer Births and our PPPI panel.
You can see all the members of our PPPI panel here.
 | Parent, Patient and Public Involvement (PPPI) Co-Lead |
 | Parent, Patient and Public Involvement (PPPI) Co-Lead |
NETWORKING (SPaM WORKSHOPS)
The Signal Processing and Monitoring (SPaM) in Labour workshop is a bi-annual event, held since 2015. It is an exciting initiative to bring together experts in labour monitoring and fetal heart rate analysis to critically review and discuss current issues such as: new technology; comprehensive digital databases; statistical analysis; classification; clinical practice, fetal physiology and challenges. Our team regularly attends and presents at these meetings.
The presentations from the last workshop in July 2024 in Cagliari, Italy, are available here.
SPOTLIGHT: HOw we LISTEN TO A BABY'S HEARTBEAT
A CTG also known as a Cardiotocograph is a machine that monitors the baby's heartbeat and the uterine contractions during pregnancy and labour. We can listen to the fetal heart rate through a stethoscope, a Doppler hand-held device or a continuous electronic monitor. Electronic monitoring produces a paper strip, showing graphs of the fetal heart rate and of uterine contractions, which change with time.
watch our WORK ON YOUTUBE
Signal Process and Monitoring in Labour (SPaM) workshop 2022.
European Academy of Paediatrics Sciences 2020.
SPaM workshop 2024
Our Latest publications
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AI-driven decision support systems and epistemic reliance: a qualitative study on obstetricians' and midwives' perspectives on integrating AI-driven CTG into clinical decision making.
Journal article
Dlugatch R. et al, (2024), BMC Med Ethics, 25
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Multimodal Deep Learning for Predicting Adverse Birth Outcomes Based on Early Labour Data
Journal article
Asfaw D. et al, (2023)
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Prediction of Fetal Blood Pressure during Labour with Deep Learning Techniques
Journal article
Tolladay J. et al, (2023), Bioengineering, 10, 775 - 775