LMS News

2005-09-12
Philip Warrick from LMS medical to present findings on FHR pattern recognition at international bio medical conferences

Montreal, Quebec, Sept 12, 2005 – Philip Warrick, Senior Medical Research Engineer for LMS Medical Systems, a healthcare technology company and developer of the CALM™ system (Computer Assisted Labor Management), is presenting poster sessions on the topic of Fetal Heart Rate (FHR) pattern recognition at two international conferences in Asia.

The focus of Mr. Warrick’s presentations at these conferences includes innovative techniques to detect FHR decelerations and to detect significant changes in FHR patterns.

Although childbirth is a natural process and outcomes are generally good, approximately 1-7 in 1000 babies experience sufficient oxygen deprivation during labor to cause death or brain injury. Multiple reviews of such cases suggest that up to 50% of these injuries are related to preventable medical errors, most often centering on incorrect analysis of the FHR recording. As a result, the goals of these studies are to develop effective methods to assess FHR patterns in order to reduce the incidence and severity of birth related brain damage.

"Clinicians have been using fetal monitors for the last 50 years; the results of this research provide critical information that is long overdue. We are pleased to be able to offer clinicians and risk managers alike a better understanding of the complex relationship between FHR patterns and obstetrical outcomes. These advanced methods, together with LMS' patented CALM Patterns™ software, provide yet another milestone in LMS' goal of improving quality of care and reducing risk in obstetrics." says Dr. Emily Hamilton, Founder and VP of Research & Development for LMS Medical.

The 27th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society took place on Sept 1-4, 2005, in Shanghai, China. This conference brought together researchers, educators and developers from academic fields and industries worldwide to share their research results and exchange ideas covering all areas of biomedical engineering.

The 5th International Workshop on Biosignal Interpretation took place on September 6-8, 2005, in Tokyo, Japan. The goal of this workshop was to bring together experts to explore new fields of bio-signal interpretation, including model based signal analysis, data interpretation and integration applied to medical decisions.

Together with the recent IJCNN conference organized in Montreal by the International Neural Network Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, where LMS presented a paper on the topic of "Neural Network Based Detection of Fetal Heart Rate Patterns", LMS has quickly gained recognition and acceptance as a world expert in the advancement of FHR interpretation.

Mr. Warrick is a PhD. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at McGill University. He also is a Senior Medical Researcher at LMS Medical Systems in Montreal where his work contributes to the development of cutting edge obstetrical tools for the evaluation of labor, shoulder dystocia and fetal tolerance to labour - in order to help clinical teams improve outcomes and reduce risk. The CALM software suite incorporates statistical processes to quantify normal and abnormal labor progression as well as digital signal processing and neural network applications for the identification of abnormal fetal heart rate patterns. These tools address the most common themes found in adverse outcomes and litigation in obstetrics.

The software suite includes:

CALM Curve™ - for consistent and objective assessment of the labor progress at the bedside
CALM Patterns™ – for real-time measurement and classification of fetal heart rate patterns
CALM Shoulder Screen™ – for the assessment of the risk of shoulder dystocia before the onset of labor

For more information about these conferences, please see: http://www.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/EMBC05shanghai/ and http://www.bsi2005.org/bsi2005/index.html