Telemedicine solution improves the start of family life for parents with premature children

In 2014, over 200 premature children and their mothers were hospitalised for a long time in the neonatal department at Hans Christian Andersen's Hospital for Children and Adolescents in Odense for treatment and care. The current practice is that premature babies can only come home when the child can feed at the breast or bottle and gain weight without supplementary nutrition from a tube. It only happens around the original due date. For many of the families, this means that they find it difficult to establish themselves as a family, as the child's father cannot be hospitalised and they are not in a familiar environment. The anxiety of being hospitalised and away from home can also mean that there are problems with getting started with breastfeeding and getting the necessary sleep. And if there are other children in the family, it is often difficult to get everything together and to get a good start in life with the new little one, when mother and child are away from home for a long time.

Therefore, Odense University Hospital (OUH) has initiated a research project to investigate whether it is possible to send mother and child home from the hospital earlier, supported by a telemedicine solution, which means that they can still have close contact with the staff at the hospital.

My Hospital

In the project, the families are discharged earlier and then receive support from the staff in the neonatal ward via an iPad, which the hospital provides. On the iPad is the My Hospital app, which contains information about the care of a premature baby as well as the possibility to communicate with the department via text messages and video calls.

The app was developed at OUH and is integrated with the electronic patient record. Via My Hospital, families can also upload pictures and videos of their child to show to the staff. There is also a nutrition chart, which is sent via the app to the family twice a week. The nutrition chart states what amount of food, protein and vitamins the child should have.

Twice a week, the parents participate in regular video meetings with a nurse to ensure that the child thrives and grows as it should. In addition, the child is checked by a doctor in the ward every two weeks as an extra safety measure.

If an emergency situation arises, the families can also call or show up at the department around the clock. In this way, the family gets support from the staff to start breastfeeding and to feed the baby via tube, without them having to be admitted to hospital.

Better quality of life without lowering the treatment quality

The research project at OUH is led by PhD student Kristina Garne Holm, and has been underway since autumn 2014. The first early repatriations of families with telemedicine began in November 2015: So far, 18 children have been hospitalised with telemedicine.

"The preliminary results show that the families are really happy with the offer and feel that they get a calmer start, while still having access to the professional help from the hospital that they need. The technical solution with video calls via the My Hospital app works well and the families find that it is both easy and safe to use," says Kristina Garne Holm.

The staff at the department are also positive about the solution:

"We have set up a special room in the department where the nurses can make video calls to the homes in peace and quiet at agreed-upon times, when the parents call the department. The project nurses feel that the solution contributes something positive to the families," says Kristina Garne Holm.

The PhD project will last until September 2017 and during that time will test the home admissions on many more premature children and their parents. A total of 70 children are expected to participate in the project, so that a thorough evaluation can be made of the offer and its effects on both the quality experienced by the patient, the clinical effects in relation to the premature children and the technical solution as well as the economics of a larger rollout of the offer.

The collaboration behind the research project

The research project is supported by the Region of Southern Denmark, University of Southern Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen's Hospital for Children and Adolescents in Odense, the Health Foundation, the Aase and Ejner Danielsen Foundation and OUH's Free Research Funds and takes place in a collaboration between HCA Hospital for Children and Adolescents and their research unit HCA Research as well as the Centre for Innovative Medical Technology (CIMT), the research unit for innovation and telemedicine at OUH and SDU.