A Data Logger For Monitoring Maternal Vital Signs During Labour

Abstract

Worldwide, maternal morbidity and mortality remains high with an estimated 830 women dying daily from preventable complications associate with pregnancy, with most of these cases occur in developing countries (WHO, 2017). The partograph has been recommend as a tool for use to help monitor labour progress to mitigate these risks. Nevertheless, completion of the partographs has proved to be evasive due to factors such as; staff shortage, inadequate training of staff and lack of supplies to monitor labour among others. These factors have thus resulted in a maternal mortality rate of 510 death for every 100,000 births in Kenya which is very high compared to the global ratio of 216 deaths for every 100,000. In an effort to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, this research seeks to study the current interventions used to mitigate maternal morbidity and mortality during the labour process and develop solutions around these findings. Progress has been made in the area of maternal healthcare with an aim to reduce maternal mortality, related works that have been done before include; The partopen which is a digital pen used to fill a partograph form and is capable of giving time-based reminder with decision support. A second solution is the e-partogram. This is a monitoring and decision support electronic version of the partograph which focuses on connecting peripheral level providers to a central level supervisor. mlabour is another solution based on a mobile application which envelops an electronic partograph into workflows for recording patient details, updating and resolving maternal issues. To develop the prototype, an awareness of the problem was studied with the use of secondary data. Tools used for measurement, under-staffing and overcrowding will be investigated with the help of questionnaires. We then built our prototype informed by the information collected. The prototype comprised of two main parts; the hardware which will be responsible for collection of the maternal vital signs, processing of the data and relaying it to the server which is the second part of the prototype. The server will be responsible for the storage of data received from the hardware as well as receiving and process request from a user. The design of the prototype involved the selection of the resources to be used based on local availability. Once the resources were obtained the prototype was broken down to module and unit v tests carried out to test for correct functionality, after which the modules were integrated. Partograph completion level was show to be less than 40%. Foetal heart rate and cervical dilation had the highest completion rate while urinalysis, moulding and amniotic fluid had the lowest. The prototype would be useful in assisting nurses fill their partographs by recording vitals that a normally neglected or minimally recorded resulting in a better completion rate Further work needs to be done to monitor foetal conditions as our study focused on maternal condition. Additionally, sharing of information among health facilities would further improve care.