DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Dr. Reid Goodman was out to lunch when he flicked on his iPhone and realized something was seriously wrong -- his patient in labor at Denver's Rose Medical Center was in trouble.

The obstetrician was halfway to the hospital by the time a nurse called to tell him what he had already seen on his smartphone: The baby's heart rate was dropping substantially every time the woman had a contraction.

It turned out the umbilical cord was wound around the baby's neck.

Goodman and other physicians who deliver babies at the hospital are now linked by BlackBerrys and iPhones to the data spitting out of monitors strapped to women's bellies during childbirth.

By logging on to an application called AirStrip OB, they can view the "strip" showing fluctuations in fetal heartbeat, contractions, oxygen levels in the mother's blood and nurses' notes recording cervical dilation.

"I can find out for myself what's going on and make my own judgment," said Goodman, who works at Mile High Ob/Gyn Associates.

"I can do this from home. I can do it from a restaurant. I can do it from my office. Not that I don't trust the nurses, I do ... but I'm the one who is accountable to the patient."

Doctors have called for emergency cesarean sections after looking at the graphs on their smartphones, asking the hospital to prep for surgery as they drive over. Before Rose purchased the application about nine months ago, patients needing a C-section typically had to wait for their doctor to arrive to evaluate them.

"A nurse cannot call a C-section; it has to be a doctor," said Alexis Blank, Rose's coordinator of registered nurses. "A doctor cannot be at a bedside throughout the entire laboring process. It's the nurse who is there, who knows every minute how this patient is doing."

In the past, nurses sometimes had to fax strips to a doctor, wasting critical minutes.

Blank is careful to point out, though, that the smartphone application is a tool to improve verbal communication between nurses and doctors -- not replace it.

"Obviously, the nurse is not relying on the phone to notify the physician," she said.

Still, it happens fairly often these days that when Blank calls doctors to give them a patient update, they've already seen it for themselves.

"It improves doctors' quality of life," Blank said. "They don't have to live on the (maternity ward) deck."

When a woman arrives in labor, nurses immediately hook up a monitor to record fetal heart rate and contractions. Data from the monitor pour into a computer server, which is linked to the maternity ward's electronic medical-records system.

An obstetrician who has the AirStrip OB application can log on to the server and see a list of all the patients in the maternity ward. By clicking on a specific patient, a doctor can see that patient's data in real time.

About half of the 50 or so OBs who deliver at Rose have the application on their smartphones. The hospital pays about $200 per doctor every month for the service.

AirStrip Technologies, which sells the application, also has apps for cardiology, critical care and lab results.

Dr. Donna Okuda, who delivers eight to 10 babies each month, said the AirStrip OB has given her "a lot more freedom to have a life."

It's easier to take in a movie or plan dinner when she can see on her phone exactly how close a patient is to giving birth. Still, Okuda said, "I've made a couple girlfriends walk home with to-go boxes."

Okuda was able to see other patients who were not yet in labor at her office last week while monitoring the contractions of Irina Rubinova. When Okuda noticed on her iPhone that the baby's heartbeat was fluctuating too much with every contraction, she dropped what she was doing and headed to the hospital.

"I know they can monitor in the room, with all the medical personnel ... but I didn't know she was doing it on her phone," said Rubinova, a day after she had 7-pound Dalia. "It was pretty amazing."

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