INFANT
Athena
Maternity Information System
K2MS Portal -
Medical Grade Touchscreen PC
K2MS Guardian
V2 - Full electronic capture of patient information during childbirth
K2MS Online Fetal
Monitoring Training Syste
K2MS CTG Duplication & Restoration Service
What is INFANT?
INFANT is software to interpret fetal heart rate monitoring that took us over 20 years to develop. It has taken this time because correct CTG interpretation is difficult. On the one hand INFANT must be good at detecting problems within all manner of patterns and on the other hand it must not be over sensitive so as to raise concern unnecessarily. Achieving this balance is very hard, for human and computer. INFANT analyses the FHR and contraction pattern and alerts clinicians to potential problems in a timely way. INFANT has been validated on databases of several thousand interesting, abnormal and challenging traces and has been found to perform at the level of experts whose ability we have measured.
How is INFANT deployed?
INFANT is a software module that runs within our K2MS Guardian™ labour and delivery computer system (K2MS Guardian™). INFANT® runs in real time at the bedside using a direct feed from the fetal monitor. The Guardian system communicates INFANT all around the hospital network so that all monitoring can be viewed at central stations, offices or remotely from home.
The concern states for each room are clearly indicated on the central view.
How does INFANT Express itself?
INFANT asseses the same features of the CTG that a human expert would. These include Baseline, Variability, Accelerations, Decelerations Signal Quality, Contractions patterns, Pushing, Sinusoidal and Bimodal patterns. Where these parameters become abnormal they are clearly marked.
Concern Ladder
INFANT also expresses an overall concern level for the trace according to 4 levels.
Red – Serious and Urgent concerns with CTG. Review all aspects of the labour, make a plan and document.
Yellow – Serious Concerns with the CTG. Inform senior staff. Review all aspects of the labour, make a plan and document.
Blue – Minor Concerns with the CTG. Continue to observe the trace closely, document your plan and inform senior staff where appropriate.
Green – No concerns
INFANT escalates attention seeking
INFANT will draw attention to changing patterns in the CTG. For Yellow and Red levels of concern, the clinician must acknowledge they have seen and are responding by applying their thumbprint. If this is not done within a few minutes an alert tone will sound. If this is also ignored or if there is no clinician in the room then a recorded human voice will issue a warning that will suggest senior clinical staff are summoned.
Is INFANT used on real patients ?
INFANT® was granted a CE Mark at the end of 2009 and is approved for use on patients.
K2 is a strong believer in appropriate healthcare evaluation before new technologies are released for widespread use. Accordingly we have taken the responsible decision to release INFANT as part of a controlled study, The INFANT Study.
The INFANT Study, the largest maternity study undertaken in the UK, is funded by the Department of Health's Health Technology Assessment Programme (HTA) at a cost of £6m. It is targeted to run for 3 years and aims to recruit 46,000 women from 12-16 hospitals in UK and Ireland.
The Principal Investigator for the INFANT Study is Prof Peter Brocklehurst of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Oxford University and K2 is at arms length from the operational aspects of the study and the data. Further details of the INFANT Study can be found here https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/infant.
As the INFANT® software runs within Guardian™, any hospitals currently running Guardian are eligible to join the study.
What are INFANT's aims ?
INFANT® aims to detect signs of problems early and improve outcomes by supporting human interpretation of the CTG. This is being tested in the INFANT Study. INFANT does not remove the need for human interpretation; think of INFANT as another informed voice that should be taken into consideration when managing labour. Guidance that is there to provoke thought, inform but to be over-ruled when deemed necessary.
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