| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/J89835/01 |
| Title: |
INTELLIGENT TECHNIQUES FOR HANDLING UNCERTAINTY IN COMPUTER-ASSISTED MANAGEMETN OF LABOUR |
| Principal Investigator: |
Ifeachor, Professor E |
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| Department: |
Communication & Electronic Eng |
| Organisation: |
University of Plymouth |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 August 1994 |
Ends: |
31 October 1997 |
Value (£): |
84,089
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Intelligent & Expert Systems |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Much of the technology available to the obstetrician today produces results that require a great deal of time and expertise to interpret correctly, but the day to day labour ward management is carried out by constantly changing junior clinical staff, leading to incidents of unnecessary medical intervention, injury or loss during labour. Further, the assessment of the needs of the baby immediately after birth is based on differing, imprecise and subjective outcome measures. As part of a major initiative to better match the technology to the needs of the user to improve the quality of intrapartum care, we have successfully developed two expert systems, one to provide advice to clinicians during labour and the other to provide an interpretation of cord blood gas results after labour. The aim of this proposal is to extend the previous work to address the fundamental problems of imprecision and uncertainty in obstetric data and knowledge to make the systems more robust, and to cater for differences of opinion and approaches between experts identified in our validation study involving 17 external experts. A new strategy for interpreting outcome measures, suitably weighted, will be developed to allow clinicians to assess the condition of the baby at birth more accurately and assist them to determine the immediate care for the infant. The new approach could form the basis for developing a new standard for assessing the outcome of labour and for the subsequent assessment of the long term needs of babies who have not coped well in labour. It could also set a medico-legal standard for audit and for assessing new technology in fetal monitoring.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.plym.ac.uk |