Innovative Maternity App Taken Up by NHS Trusts Across the Country
The Mum & Baby app exemplifies how digital innovation in the NHS is transforming patient care and was recently adopted by six more regions.
What started as a quality improvement project by one doctor for new mums at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London has developed into one of the top three women’s health apps in the UK, having recently been adopted by six more Local Maternity Services across the NHS in England.
The multi-award-winning Mum & Baby app was originally developed by Dr Sunita Sharma at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust with its charity CW+ and specialist healthcare app developers, Imagineear Ltd, as part of the CW Innovation programme. This new surge of uptake means that nearly 25% of all Local Maternity Services in England will be represented in the app, enabling many more thousands of users to access bespoke content, local advice and contacts.
Now in its fourth iteration, the innovative Mum & Baby app has evolved with new, clinically-robust content. The North West London Local Maternity System has taken the lead to deliver on the ambitions of the NHS Better Births report, involving mums, midwives and doctors, Royal Colleges and local authorities to provide women and their families with a single, readily available source of trusted, clinically-evidenced and locally-relevant information on pregnancy, birth and beyond.
From the start of pregnancy to early parenthood, the app supports women and their families by providing:
- Options on where in their locality they would like to give birth and how they would like their birth to go.
- Access to essential, clinically-validated information regarding every step of the journey, from early pregnancy, to giving birth and looking after a new baby.
- Personalised plans for their care during pregnancy, birth and beyond.
The app offers an easy-to-navigate screen, multiple links and videos on a range of useful topics; emotional and physical wellbeing, mental health concerns, advice for partners, preparing for labour, your stay in hospital, post-delivery care, baby care basics, mum and baby checks, recovering from different types of delivery, dealing with medical conditions, and advice for being back at home. Personal preferences for each stage of the maternity journey can be documented and stored within the app – perfect for sharing with care providers and initiating conversations that support collaborative and personalised care plans.
The app also includes near-real-time updates concerning Public Health England’s advice on COVID-19 for pregnant women and new mothers, and has been included in ORCHA’s Covid-19 Health App Library.
Helen Radice, North West London Maternity Transformation Programme Lead, says: “We are delighted that more women across England can now download the locally-tailored, clinician-validated, evidence-based Mum & Baby app. The growing adoption of the app illustrates the transformative power of clinician-user collaborations in improving the care of pregnant women and new parents. We hope that more and more local maternity services across the UK want to share the app with their patients.”
Dr Sunita Sharma, Consultant Obstetrician at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and initial creator of the app, says: “The Mum & Baby app shows how clinicians can innovate through collaboration and harness digital technology to empower women and their families. Over the last five years, we have been able to co-design the app, adapting it to meet the needs of women and their families.
“We’re thrilled that more parents across the country can now benefit from the clinician-validated information in the Mum & Baby app, which also encourages mothers to make personal care plans and provides them with locally relevant health and wellbeing information they can access. We continue to work on further enhancements directly in response to recent national maternity reports and ongoing parent feedback.”
The Mum & Baby app is available in both iOS and Android formats, and you can download the app from your Apple Store or Google Play.
