This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Hospital using new app to bring parents closer to newborns
Great Western Hospital’s (GWH) Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) is one of the first in the region to use a new app which allows nurses to send photographs and written updates of a baby’s progress to their parents.
The New Life Special Care Babies charity donated three iPads to the ward in June for staff to use the Baby Diary app, which works with an internet connection to receive real-time messages.
The app is being launched across the South West and GWH is one of the first neonatal units to put it into action.
Baby Diary, produced by neonatal database system BadgerNet, can be downloaded to parents’ smartphones and tablets, and used online, to save photographs and share special moments with family at home.
The app can be used at any time of the day but is regularly in action during the ward’s night shifts, as a way to reassure parents on how their babies are settling.
Dr Sarah Bates, consultant paediatrician and neonatologist, said: “Being separated from your baby after birth, especially when your baby is sick or premature, is an enormous trauma.
"It will help in some small way to provide that greater link for parents for those times when they can't be at their baby's side.
"It is a real success so far; one parent said to me earlier: 'It makes me feel like the nurses aren't just looking after my baby, they are looking after my whole family.'"
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