Photo: UVA Children’s Hospital
For years, sick babies at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital would spend days, weeks and even months in the heavily-monitored, technology-filledneonatal intensive care unit, only to eventually go home with little more than old-school binders for their parents to diligently take notes on their health with a pen and paper.
“It was kind of archaic how we did it. We would send the parents home with these binders and ask them to write things down and call us days and weeks later with some of the data. These were high-risk children, and we have them in the hospital hooked up to all of these monitors and then we send them home with a pen and paper,”Jeffrey Vergales, a pediatric cardiologist at UVA, tells PEOPLE. “We would go back 100 years in technology.”
Brooke Vergales (right) in the UVA Children’s Hospital NICU.UVA Children’s Hospital
Jeffrey and Brooke knew that there had to be a better way. Jeffrey reached out to a former coworker now withLocus Health, a digital health company, to design an Apple iPad app that would allow parents to do everything they would at the hospital — monitor their feedings, record their weight — from the comfort of their home. And the app, which is customized for each patient, seamlessly transmits the data to the their medical records, where doctors can get immediate updateson the babies’ health.
From Apple: Enabling Neonatal Care at Home with UVA
The program started in Jeffrey’s cardiac unit in March 2016, and within the last year, expanded to Brooke’s NICU. Jeffrey was initially worried about how parents would react to the program, but it’s been a huge success.
“I thought that we would create a bunch of anxiety among parents and it was the complete opposite. They felt more connected to their kids,” he says.
And Brooke has sent 30 babies home with their parents using the program with no issues.
Parents video chatting with doctors at UVA Children’s Hospital.UVA Children’s Hospital
Though some parents were hesitant at first, they’ve sincewelcomed the system.
The app has since expanded to 15 other major children’s hospitals across the country, and the Vergales and Locus Health hope to keep it going to even more. They’re also working on extending the program to different types of patients in need, beginning with transplant kids, and they hope to figure out a way to make it work for people with chronic health problems.
source: people.com
