- John Illman
- john{at}jicmedia.org
It was a unique and close student-mentor relationship that set a genial, good humoured “student” on course to becoming a world leader. The teacher, Geoffrey Dawes, was in his 70s; the student, Chris Redman, was in his late 40s. Redman, who described Dawes as his most important mentor, recalled that it was not “the usual student-mentor relationship,” not just because of their ages, but because they spent so much time together.
They began working together in 1977, when clinical outcomes were devastating for babies born to mothers with pre-eclampsia. Across a painstaking 13 year collaboration they helped to set a new standard of care in pre-eclampsia treatment.
Dawes-Redman system
The Dawes-Redman system was the first computerised programme for assessing fetal heart rate. It identified early indicators of distress and studies have shown it has saved thousands of lives.
The two men created a prototype in 1980, but it took another 10 years to produce a marketable version that standardised trace interpretations. First sold in 1991, this gold standard system is now used in more than 130 countries.
Dawes, a neonatal physiologist, was director of Oxford’s Nuffield Institute for Medical Research. …
