The Safe Delivery App to teach birth attendants in hard-to-reach areas how to manage complicated deliveries

The Safe Delivery App is an innovative mobile health tool developed by Maternity Foundation in partnership with the University of Copenhagen and the University of Southern Denmark. Through simple animated clinical instruction films, the app can teach birth attendants in hard-to-reach areas how to manage complicated deliveries. The app is based on global clinical guidelines and has the potential to overcome the outreach barriers of conventional training programs, ensuring that more women have access to skilled care when giving birth.

You can find more information about the App, and links to download it at: http://maternity.dk/en/content/mhealth

The Safe Delivery App does not need any Internet connection once it is downloaded. Hence, health workers can use it offline. Some projects have preinstalled the app on phones before giving them to health workers, to ensure that the apps where on the phones, and because many of the health workers were located in rural areas with no connectivity at all.

The app is available for iPhones and Androids. There is no version for Windows phones. It has been used on cheap smart phones, and works well (e.g. Huawei Ascend Y330 smartphone model in Tanzania). However, it’s important that the phone has enough memory, recommended at least 4GB.

Finally – the app is based on international clinical guidelines from WHO and ALSO, among others. When implementing in a new country and setting, the developers have adapted it to the national guidelines. Maternity Foundation plans to support partners in the roll-out, including supporting implementation, conducting research with academic partners, consolidating learning, disseminating results and best practices. The app automatically tracks user patterns, behavior and knowledge levels via GPRS. Knowledge levels are measured based on tests automatically generated via the app to each user. Hence, it is possible to analyze who is using the app, how much, where, how and with what effect. All of which we off course would be shared with those implementing the app in new settings.

Links for downloading the app are:

Google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.maternity.safedeliveryapp

App store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id985603707