Portsmouth midwives co-create app

Portsmouth midwives have co-created an app to help expectant mothers decide where they want to have their babies.

Project manager Emily Gaskell said the creation of My Birthplace was prompted by the release of national research looking at choice of place of birth and outcomes for babies.

She said this involved a lot of complex data and many midwives had not read it, so could not make mothers aware of its implications.

The Health Foundation was looking for projects that deliver information to patients in innovative ways and funded the development of Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust’s birthplace decision tool with a £72,000 grant.

Gaskell told EHI the app was piloted with around 230 low risk women who used it between weeks 25 and 36 of pregnancy in October and November last year.

Women were asked at 12 weeks what their preferred place of birth is. Previously this was recorded in around 30% of records. However, after using the app, a preference was recorded for around 70% of women.

The app is web-based and can be used on any device. Gaskell said it is a decision support tool rather than a decision maker.

“Lots of people use apps, its very user friendly and something they can access on their phones or tablets. It’s not another information leaflet and we can update it easily,” she explained.

The application takes national data and links this to information about local services such as a map of local birth centres and information on inter-hospital transfer rates.

Lead midwife Mandy Forrester said: “we wanted to make sure women were getting the same information in the same way so they are really making an informed choice about what’s best for them”.

A group of midwives collaborated on the content of the tool and a freelance technical expert wrote the app. It has been refined following feedback from the pilot and is now being made to “look pretty” before being officially rolled out to Portsmouth maternity services in March.

Gaskell said the trust is keen to be able to develop the app for use elsewhere, by localising it for other communities. This would be a commercial venture, with any profit invested in developing other apps.