The problem we're trying to solve is that many babies are born without enough oxygen to their brain, and that causes lifelong injury and damage to their brain and problems with their development. 

There are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary caesarean sections that are being performed with greater morbidity to mothers. And also, unfortunately, some of the babies that do need intervention get missed with really tragic consequences.

70% of emergency C-sections that occur could be unnecessary. 

The current standard of care is a device that measures the baby's heart rate, and that's what's been used for the last 60 years. It hasn't changed, and we now understand globally it’s not a really accurate way of determining whether the baby is in distress or not.

The device has been invented by Vital Trace. They have developed a device that picks up the lactate in the tissue. And this is a chemical that is produced when the body doesn't have enough oxygen. And what this allows obstetricians and midwives to do, with the procedure they know and are very familiar with, is insert this sensor to the baby's head via the birth canal and measure heart rate.

And lactate in real time. So all the results are beamed to the bedside. This not only allows for better decision making, but for the mothers, it's a completely wireless experience, so a much more comfortable, natural form of labour. The device compared to our traditional monitoring is a real paradigm shift.

I've used the device in action in our labour ward. 

So far I've found it really quite straightforward to use. The application of the device is very similar to existing apparatus that we'll use. A reduction in obstetric intervention. A particular reduction in emergency caesarean sections with multiple benefits, so better outcomes for mothers, better outcomes for babies, but also better outcomes for our hospital system.

Caesareans are more expensive than normal birth and if we can reduce those unnecessary caesarean sections, then that's a saving to the health economy impact is what we all strive for as researchers. 

After a long period of really working hard in the background to actually get it to the point where we're now putting it on unborn babies of moms in labour is just so incredibly exciting.