What is Prolonged Labour

This chapter introduces the partograph as an essential tool of labour management. It describes the concept of the partograph from its historical perspective and highlights its benefits, practical application in contemporary clinical practice, and current challenges to its universal implementation. It also explores the feasibility of design and incorporation of electronic partograph into teleobstetrics to facilitate remote but skilled birth attendance as one of the ways to tackle the problems of prolonged labour resulting from inequitable distribution of maternity specialists in underserved populations. The author hopes that understanding of the basic concept of the partograph, its practical application, and barriers to its global implementation would reveal research priorities in the subject of partography and guide interested information technologists in the development of appropriate design and usage of partograph in the electronic form.