Centralised Fetal Monitoring System with Hardware-Based Data Flow Control

Central patient monitoring has become the standard approach in modem medicine. In the fetal surveillance system the bedside monitor as an input device enables fetal heart rate, uterine contractions and fetal movement information to be accessed by a computer. However, connection of several fetal monitors (various types sometimes) to the system meets a few serious software and hardware problems. The efforts that have been taken to solve these problems during the development of the centralised fetal monitoring system are discussed in this paper.