Ta-Wei Chu and Chuan-Jun Su
Electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) systems have become a very promising tool over last few decades to facilitate monitoring among different practitioners, such as midwives, obstetricians, and labor and delivery nursing staff. The inception of electronic fetal monitoring systems encourages the integration of many clinical activities in fetal monitoring; however, advanced technologies have not provided obstetrician with the opportunity to promote pervasive fetal monitoring services with real time status examinations due to the lack of a means for automatic and continuous monitoring. In this paper we describe an automated EFM diagnosis tool (AEDT) that is capable of continuously and automatically collecting and analyzing the EFM data. By integrating the AEDT with light-weight, portable fetal monitor devices, continuous long-term monitoring can be performed without interfering with a patient’s everyday activities and without restricting her mobility.