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Based on the information available and the testing conducted, the cause of the reported problem was a design defect in the transducer's firmware (fw).Philips investigation determined this issue is caused by changes implemented under an engineering change released on may 25,2023.These changes updated the ultrasound t=transducer with a new central processing unit (cpu) board and firmware in response to a shortage of multiple components.Due to a chip shortage situation, a hardware (hw)/software (sw) design change was required, which introduced a performance issue to the fetal heart rate (fhr) measurement of wired ultrasound (us) transducers.The need for subtle adjustments of the transmit/receive time windows in us measurements unexpectedly introduced interference with adjacent transducers (twin/triplet use cases) by generating measurable artificial rhythmic signals that can be interpreted as actual physiological signals (fetal heart beats).This investigation determined that the new firmware which is designed for all avalon transducers, shows an unexpected issue for the ultrasound transducer (867246).When monitoring multiples (twins or triplets), the wired avalon ultrasound transducers (product no.867246) have a tendency to produce an artificial fetal heart rate (fhr) instead of fhr gaps, mostly at approximately 180 bpm, in situations where the physiological signal (echo from pulsating fetal heart) is absent or very weak.A field change order (fco) was implemented on july 8, 2024, to update the transducer firmware.The cause of the reported problem was confirmed to be a design defect in the transducer's firmware.The fco has been implemented, the issue was resolved after updating the transducer fw to rev.L.01.05.
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