The latest version of the award-winning Mum & Baby app has been developed to allow all NHS Local Maternity Systems (LMS) to sign up to give their new mums personalised choice for their maternity care.
The app, originally the brainchild of Dr Sunita Sharma, Consultant Obstetrician from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS FT, has been continuously developed by Imagineear in partnership with North West London LMS and CW+, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS FT’s charity, to add new functionality, wider access to specific information, local contacts and self-referral.
Mum & Baby includes extensive NHS curated advice and information on all aspects of pregnancy, birth and early parenthood and delivers on the vision of the NHS Better Births report.
Personal preferences for each stage of the maternity journey can be documented and stored within the app for sharing with care providers, generating conversations that support collaborative and personalised care plans.
The app also offers an easy-to-navigate screen, multiple links and videos of 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 and medical conditions and advice for when back at home.
ORCHA, the world’s leading health app evaluation and advisor organisation, awarded the Mum & Baby app its prestigious kitemark following the app’s achievement of an 86% rating, making it the highest rated pregnancy and birth app evaluated by ORCHA.
Clare Cooper-Hammond, Imagineear MD for UK & Ireland said:
“This app is now open to any NHS England LMS which wants to provide choices around the where and how of maternity care in their area and to give local information and contacts pertinent to users to provide an excellent patient. Through our newly created portal LMSs can add and edit their app content on an on-going basis providing a flexible way of keeping content up-to-date. The localisation and ease of use are proving an attractive proposition to LMSs signing up to the app and the take-up rate so far has been encouraging.”
Helen Maric,Implementation Lead, Maternity Transformation Programme,
Strategy and Transformation Team, NHS North West London Health and Care Partnership said:
“Working in partnership with Imagineear, service users and maternity clinicians from across North West London to develop the Mum & Baby app has been a fantastic collaborative experience. Together we have created an application that is improving access to maternity services, providing clinically approved information to deliver public health, maternal and neonatal safety messages and offering greater personalisation and choice of maternity care. The success of the app is testament to the strength of our partnership working.”
The Mum & Baby app case study is also featured on: NHS England’s Atlas of Shared Learning
