New research recently found that a new mobile app boosts the confidence of parents while caring for their babies, and it continues to help them up to a whole month after leaving the hospital.
A EurekAlert! report said parents of premature babies in the NICU or neonatal intensive care unit, in particular, are receiving a dizzying amount of information about the changing weight, respiratory levels, and feeding patterns, among others, of their baby.
More often than not, it is too much for parents to absorb, especially when they are deprived of sleep and stressed.
That is why a smartphone app called NICU2Home, tested at Northwestern University, which is still in the research stage, aims to make the transition easier for the parents.
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A nurse takes care of a baby at the neonatology intensive care unit (NICU)
An App Developed to Assist Parents
Parents in the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, who used the app reported they felt more confident about caring for their babies while the latter was in the NICU and up to 30 days from being discharged, compared to parents belonging to the control group who did not use the app.
The study found this was a link to how often parents used the app and their reported confidence level in terms of caring for their baby.
According to professor of pediatrics and medical social sciences Dr. Craig Garfield, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, many of the things parents do to care for their baby, like feeding, bathing, or even holding, are being done the professionals in the NICU.
Craig, a pediatrician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, added that many parents do not feel comfortable caring for their premature babies as they are very tiny sick, not to mention connected to tubes and monitors.
The professor and pediatrician also said their app was designed to assist parents in being the most prepared father or mother for their premature baby. He describes the app as filling in the gaps for "tired, stressed and distracted parents."
Benefiting Parents in the NICU
More often than not, parents in the NICU are tired, distracted, or under too much stress to completely absorb the "firehose of important information" of clinicians about their babies.
The app provides personalized educational information to parents, including the baby's developmental milestones according to age, common health issues, and even video demonstrations like swaddling and feeding, among others, which fills in information at the bedside clinician may have missed providing them.
Garfield explained, as a clinician, "I might only have a limited amount of time" to discuss with a family about an issue with their baby, or they may be overwhelmed, but with the information available in the app, being hooked to the electronic medical record, not to mention having access to the app for an entire year after leaving the NICU, they think it is a really helpful tool for parents there.
According to Young Seok Lee, co-author of the study and co-founder of the app, their objective is to "empower NICU parents" through digital technology that provides the right information at the right time.
Lee, also an adjunct professor of medical sciences at Feinberg, added with a better insight into how to navigate the NICU2Home app, parents can confidently offer the right care for their newborns and even for themselves.
In addition, when parents need to go home while their baby remains in the NICU, they can remotely check for real-time updates through the app on which doctor or nurse is taking care of their baby and wake up to an update on the medical status of the baby.
Commenting on the new technology, Garfield said they found the first thing a user would do in the morning to check the app as it provides them an update on what took place overnight.
Related information about the NICU2Home app is shown on CBS Chicago's YouTube video below:
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