NeoCare supports parents and care providers
Admitting a poorly or premature child to the Neonatology ward is often an unexpected and traumatic experience for parents. They are separated from their child, enter a hectic environment, worry about their baby’s health and future, and often miss crucial information and knowledge. These experiences can lead to increased anxiety, PTSD, and can hinder the development of a strong parent-child relationship. As a caregiver, your role is crucial in mentally supporting and guiding parents during this challenging time. Parents especially need good information, practical support and want to be involved in decision-making during admission. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for caregivers to provide the desired support and information at all times.
NeoCare helps with this.
NeoCare is a digital platform specially developed to support parents both on the ward and at home. The platform embraces the Family Integrated Care approach and coaches parents with the right information at the right time. It encourages active involvement in their child’s care, development and decision-making.
‘NeoCare is thus a digital handhold for parents and helps to reduce parental stress and relieve caregivers.’
NeoCare consists of three parts:
Portal for the caregiver
Portal for the caregiver to invite parents, manage information, and possibly view data.
A smartphone app for the parents
To keep your own data, read information, and receive messages with photos/videos from the ward.
An iPad app for the nurses
An app for the ward iPad to take photos/videos of a child, and send them along with messages to concerned parent.
Portal for the hospital
The NeoCare portal allows healthcare providers to easily manage information from their own hospital, create one-off care pathways with specific information, invite parents to the appropriate care pathway, and send messages to individual parents or parents simultaneously. Parents can also be transferred to another ‘NeoCare’ hospital via the NeoHub.
App for the parents
Our app for parents is a digital handhold with comprehensive information in a library. All information managed by the hospital is thus always available to read or view at desired times. Good information provision contributes to shared decision-making.
To further actively involve parents in their child’s care and development, parents can keep track of their child’s weight, (breast) feeding, pumping, kangaroocare time and their own stress levels. They can also add their own photos and personal memories to the digital diary.
Diary
In the NeoCare app parents will find a diary in which they can track weight, nutrition, breast-milk production and mood. They can also note their experiences and add their own photos.
This part of NeoCare can possibly be expanded or adapted as the hospital desires. Please contact us for more information.
Furthermore, at the top of the screen, parents are virtually coached to read messages and articles for that day.
Care paths
The care paths guides parents step-by-step through the admission of their child, even at home. The care path timeline shows parents in chronical order:
- The articles and messages that are relevant to their specific care path.
- All items they themselves inserted into the diary.
- The messages with pictures/videos that were sent by the ward.
This creates a well-organized diary of events that can be exported and kept as a reference book full of memories.
Message from the ward
The nurses app on the ward iPad allows photos/videos and messages to be sent to parents in their absence. The parent receives the message directly in the app.
Insights
The development of weight, nutrition, breast-milk production, mood and any other diary functions are displayed in clear graphs. That way the parents can keep track of the development themselves and are more involved in the care.
Library
In the library the parents will find all educational information from their own hospital. This can be about the equipment, definitions, treatments, syndromes, discharge and transfer, etc. This also includes subjects that do not appear in a specific care path.
As healthcare provider you can refer to the information in the NeoCare app during conversations. In this way parents can read back all of the information in their own time or search for new information themselves.
More
The parents have the possibility in the ‘More’ menu to save all hospital appointments in one overview. The parent can also invite others to view (part of) the app, for example the partner or grandparents. In this way the wider community of the parents is also kept informed.
The nurses app
From the ward iPad, the nurse can very easily send a message with a photo or video to the parent if they are unable to be on the ward. For specific events, ‘stickers’ are available to digitally mark a ‘milestone’ (e.g. 2 kilos). This way the parents do not have to miss important events, or, for example, at the end of the night shift a message with a photo can be sent to let them know that the night went well. This prevents a lot of phone calls in the morning.
