I have though about this a bit before replying and truthfully, I'm not sure if it is a good or a bad thing as a whole, but I personally prefer one on one midwife care, where she uses her skills and instincts to determine progress of labour.

Advances in technology are made to make our lives easier, but in regards to these new machines, exactly whose life is being made easier? The labouring mother or the overworked maternity staff? (this is mainly in relation to large public hospitals with many women birthing at once).

Yes, I did have CTG monitoring with all three of my births on first arrival at hospital, and even more so with Paige (scalp monitor), but once labour was established, I wasn't monitored at all by CTG. I think there would be some mothers who would welcome this, because they get to be monitored without having a midwife invading personal space by being in the room, and there are others who would hate it because they lose that one on one care. I can't answer from the point of view of the midwives, but I really don't know if it would make their jobs easier or not. They still have to make physical assessments of the mother (not VE's, but as Chelleg said by interpreting behaviour etc which can't be done from a nurses station).

I would also like to know if this monitoring from a distance is failsafe? what if a midwife or other staff member gets mixed up and reports to woman A her baby is in distress when it is really woman B's baby? can this happen? or is it impossible? In busy large public hospital's mixups have been known to happen.

Another thing, if a hospital has this technology, are the midwives required to use it, or can the individual midwife use their judgement and not use it at all?