Latest News | About Us

By Poppie Webster, Reporter

A groundbreaking maternity app which allows pregnant woman to instantly message and get advice from midwives, is being rolled out at Southend Hospital.

The app, called Maternity Direct, will provide mums-to-be who are booked to give birth at Basildon, Southend and Mid Essex hospitals with seven-day-a-week access to registered midwifery staff, who they can chat with and receive up-to-date information in the very comfort of their homes.

With the app, those expecting will have access to such vital help even through the Covid-19 pandemic, without the need of an appointment or a telephone call.

This useful tool was launched to help reduce the number of non-urgent appointments, saving women time while protecting appointments for those women who require closer monitoring.

Teams from Basildon Hospital partnered with software developer Acadiant Limited to create the app, which is now being rolled out at Southend and Mid Essex hospitals this week.

Chief nursing officer Diane Sarkar said: "This truly is a fantastic innovation which supports women throughout their pregnancy, not only providing a more streamlined service to them but also improving the delivery of care by staff."

"Hospital and Acadiant staff have worked so hard developing this app, so it is fantastic to see such positive feedback."

Since August more than 5,000 women have used Maternity Direct to ask questions or seek reassurance from midwives at Basildon Hospital, with nearly 80 per cent of women chatting saying they would have used another NHS service if the app wasn't available.

One mum, who used the app during her pregnancy. said: "I was approached to test the app at an antenatal clinic. I always used Facebook for non-urgent queries and, as midwives are very busy, I didn't always get an instant reply. This app is much better, really easy to access and the chat feature is a great way to connect quickly with my midwife. I recommend this app to all mums-to-be."

Hassan Chaudhury, Digital Health Specialist, Healthcare UK (Department for International Trade), who is leading the campaign, said:

"The UK is at the forefront of transforming healthcare services by using digital solutions to prevent, diagnose, manage, and treat illnesses more effectively, as well as putting solutions in the hands of patients.

"The First 100 articulates the exportable strengths that the UK has in health tech and showcases those that stand out for being tried and tested and most importantly, making a difference across one of the most complex health systems in the world, during its most challenging time."

The chosen companies went through a rigorous vetting process, which assessed the global uniqueness of their innovation, responsiveness, track record of collaboration, successes within the NHS, and their ability and commitment to export and actively seeking international expansion.

"This is excellent timing for this important opportunity," said Jackie Kestenbaum, PhD, Director at Acadiant Limited.

"This campaign can help bring the technologies and products we built and burnished during the COVID-19 pandemic to help enable equitable access to high quality care around the globe," she said.

The campaign is backed by Healthcare UK, European Connected Health Alliance (ECHAlliance), Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI), Scottish Development International, Innovate UK, and HIMSS.

To access the First 100 UK Digital Health Companies, visit: https://eu.eventscloud.com/file_uploads/9f70074c7335664b8931a16468b017d3_TheUKsDigitalHealthPlaybook-TheFirst100.pdf

In the two years since its launch, Maternity Direct has enabled 11,000 women at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust to conduct more than 28,000 secure one-to-one chats with NHS midwives and provided almost 20,000 guests access to relevant news and guidance on its midwife-curated Health Information newsfeed.

In addition to text chats, all Maternity Direct's features are designed to help women and midwives communicate effectively to contribute to healthy pregnancy. These include a Midwife Group Chat for complex cases and handover, an interactive Personal Care Plan for women to plan their pregnancy journeys with midwives' input, and a Data Analytics Dashboard to help midwives and supervisors spot trends and better allocate resources.

Moreover, during the pandemic, the COVID-19 Triage Form was used nearly 6,000 times to help women and midwives quickly assess whether a woman should attend her antenatal appointment.

For midwives, Maternity Direct helps organise and scale precious staff resources, with a dedicated team focused on handling the chats. Maternity Direct was recently awarded "Highly Commended" for Workforce Innovation in the HSJ Partnership Awards 2021.

The judging panel comprised a diverse range of highly regarded figures across the NHS and wider healthcare sector. To be shortlisted as a finalist for these awards, despite tough competition from a pool of brilliant applications, is a mark of real achievement for Acadiant and Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

Maternity Direct is the first secure telehealth chat app in the UK that connects a pregnant woman with a registered NHS midwife for non-urgent queries and stores their text chat in the Trust's medical record system.

To address urgent needs during the pandemic, Acadiant developed COVID-19 Triage forms with real-time dashboards for Midwives to screen women before antenatal appointments. In addition, Maternity Direct provides a Midwife Group chat for complex cases and handover, a Midwife-curated Health Information feed for registered users and guests, a real-time Data Analytics Dashboard, and an interactive, digitised Personal Care Plan. To date, Maternity Direct has 7,000 registered women and 13,000 guests with nearly 80% of survey respondents saying it saved them using another NHS service.

Dr Celia Skinner, Medical Advisor to Acadiant, and former Chief Medical Officer at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust said: "We are delighted to have been shortlisted for the Workforce Innovation Award, recognising the collaborative efforts and dedication of our teams to successfully implement Maternity Direct. Maternity Direct is an important innovation in secure, remote care and surveillance, to provide reassurance to both the women and clinicians. This nomination has been a tremendous boost to both Acadiant and Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, and I am sure it will bolster our continued efforts to improve."

HSJ editor Alastair McLellan added: "We would like to congratulate Acadiant and Mid and South Essex on being nominated in the category of Workforce Innovation for the HSJ Partnership Awards 2021. We are looking forward to welcoming them to the ceremony in June, to join us in recognising the very best collaborations and innovations in the healthcare sector. This year's finalists are of an outstanding calibre and all of them are exceptionally dedicated to enhancing healthcare across the UK."

Winners are set to be announced at the awards ceremony in June.

SMART—Structured Mortality Analysis & Review Tool, was designed by Acadiant in partnership with Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust to help hospitals meet requirements for Learning from Deaths and drive quality improvement in patient care.

SMART streamlines and improves the mortality review process, interoperates with the electronic patient record system, and minimises the cognitive burden on doctors, nurses and administrators.

Moreover, during the pandemic, the COVID-19 Triage Form was used nearly 6,000 times to help women and midwives quickly assess whether a woman should attend her antenatal appointment.

This international recognition comes at a time when even more features and enhancements have been deployed onto SMART, including:

• Instantly generating board quality reports with NHS SHMI (Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator) data and crude mortality statistics;
• Real-time "Key Learnings" dashboards for use in hospital-wide and directorate mortality meetings;
• Email functionality for mortality leads and administrators to securely email links directly from SMART to the responsible reviewer.

The new dates for the conference will be announced by the organiser once confirmed.

SEHTA put a call out to its membership of 1,300 SMEs and wider database of 14,000 contacts for offers of help with the current crisis.

Acadiant is grateful to have been among the 100 offers selected with its secure telehealth chat app, Maternity Direct, that connects a pregnant woman to an NHS midwife and stores their chat in the Trust's electronic medical record.

Moreover, during the pandemic, the COVID-19 Triage Form was used nearly 6,000 times to help women and midwives quickly assess whether a woman should attend her antenatal appointment.

Maternity Direct was developed with the midwives in Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

For more information, please contact maternity@acadiant.com

For more information about SEHTA, please contact info@sehta.co.uk