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Fetal heart rate monitoring in high-risk pregnancies can require admission to hospital over prolonged periods, or the even less satisfactory alternative of routine weekly or sporadic outpatient monitoring. We have developed a digital system for distant fetal heart rate recording with the facility of later rapid transmission by telephone into the hospital. A completed half-hour recording is transmitted to the central computer and permanently stored in less than 30 s, then immediately displayed for verbal reporting. One hundred and seventeen recordings have been made in 27 patients' homes and of these 111 (95%) were easy to interpret. This expandable system meets the major functional requirements for practical and economical antenatal fetal heart rate monitoring at a distance.