About DREaMED

DREaMED is a 6 year programme, funded by the NIHR. The aim of this programme is to reduce poor outcomes for women who are pregnant or giving birth by finding better ways to recognise and treat women before they become unwell.

Why is DREaMED important?

In the UK, just under 700.000 women in the UK give birth each year. Some women suffer from complications such as becoming seriously unwell during their pregnancy or after birth. We want to find better ways to spot and treat them before they become very unwell and to treat them faster.

Healthcare professionals measure "Vital signs", such as blood pressure, heart and breathing rates, and use tools that score them to spot women becoming unwell. These tools are called “Modified Obstetric Early Warning Scores” (MOEWS). Despite their use, some complications still occur. This may be because MOEWS use only the most recently recorded vital signs, for example blood pressure. Using extra data like blood tests may help spot unwell women earlier.

What are we trying to do?

We aim to reduce these poor outcomes and find better ways of describing, spotting and treating women becoming unwell. To do this, we plan to link four projects to develop an electronic advanced maternal obstetric early warning system (eMEOWS).

We will develop a better system to reduce complications and improve care for women. We want to make sure that women get the right care at the right time.

The project will be managed by the team at the Critical Care Research Group based at the John Radcliffe hospital, Oxford in conjunction with NHS England and the National Perinatal and Epidemiology Unit, Oxford.

This initial programme of work is divided into four projects.