HEDI: App supports pregnant women and young families

Pregnant women often feel an increased need for information. It is great when midwives, gynecologists, and advisory services are within easy reach and quickly accessible as a valuable resource. Unfortunately, that is not always the case, especially in rural districts. This is where the HEDI app can help, because it puts pregnant women in touch with local contacts and services.

In this MEDICA-tradefair.com interview, Dr. Corinna Morys-Wortmann talks about the "HEDI" project and the app that connects women and families during and after pregnancy with healthcare professionals and the respective help centers.

Dr. Morys-Wortmann, what is the goal of the "HEDI – Digital Support Throughout Pregnancy" (German: "HEDI- Digitale Hilfe für die Schwangerenversorgung") project and the corresponding app?

Dr. Corinna Morys-Wortmann: Our goals are centered on our two focus groups. The first group are pregnant women and young families, whom we want to inform about the available health services here in the South Lower Saxony (German: Südniedersachsen) region.

The second group comprises the midwives. The app serves as a coordination tool for them. Midwives can create a profile, receive contact requests, and can schedule appointments with pregnant women who receive care. Prior to connecting with a midwife, pregnant women are required to enter specific information. This allows a midwife to have access to all the data she needs at the time of the care request. A map also displays the location and spatial distribution of currently established care relationships along with the care request. This allows midwives in rural areas to quickly determine the distance to expectant mothers.

Aside from pregnant women and midwives, medical practices, gynecologists, pediatricians, and counseling professionals from the "Early Aid-System" (German: "Frühe Hilfen") were likewise involved in the development.

What are the functions of the app?

Morys-Wortmann: It contains informative texts pertaining to pregnancy and childbirth and other related information targeting finances and required documents, for example. The app was developed to facilitate multiple languages, which is a key advantage. All texts are available in German, English, French, Persian and Ukrainian and are also accessible as audio files. These resources comply with care guidelines, are verified and easy to understand.

All texts are linked to respective information pertaining to local points of contact. The app includes midwives, medical practices, and counseling centers within the community such as "Early-Aid-System" resources. The texts are itemized by specific topics.

The app also includes a secure chat feature, which pertains to both video and text chats. The feature is based on "matrix chat", which is also applied in the telematics infrastructure and is approved for healthcare data exchange. The informational texts can be embedded right into the chat and are automatically displayed in the selected target language. This allows midwives and other experts to obtain a technically reliable and fast translation.

Was the use of the app scientifically monitored?

Morys-Wortmann: Both the development process and the application during the first few months were monitored by the Institute of Sociology at the Georg August University of Göttingen. The evaluation report will be published within the next few days. During development, we also collaborated with students from the midwifery study program at the Göttingen Health Campus ("Gesundheitscampus Göttingen").

Is the app limited to the region or could it also be applied to the rest of Germany?

Morys-Wortmann: This was a project we developed to facilitate the Göttingen/South Lower Saxony region – that being the city of Göttingen and the districts of Holzminden, Northeim, and Göttingen. It is a free app for users and was initially funded by subsidies but now also includes the financial assistance of respective municipalities. We teamed up with the German County Association ("Deutscher Landkreistag") to draw up a contract template, which means it can be easily adopted by other districts. By now, we have moved beyond South Lower Saxony. The city and district of Kassel and the districts of Wolfenbüttel and Helmstedt have joined to participate. We are currently also in talks with other municipalities.

The developers at aidminutes GmbH are responsible for entering and updating the provided addresses. Districts can expand the app specifically to include their own information and services for pregnant women and young families, for example. App users are subsequently directed to the respective regional options.

Having said that, the app is currently only available as a progressive web app because it is not yet accessible via the app stores. It means users must first open the https://hedi.app/ page, add it to their smartphone's home screen and then use it like a regular app.

Are you planning to make additional enhancements or is your work completed?

Morys-Wortmann: The app is under continuous development from a technical perspective and as it pertains to standards and interfaces. As I have mentioned earlier, more and more municipalities are getting involved as well. This enables us to provide content in additional languages, which obviously costs money. As more parties are getting actively involved in the app development, the more it will benefit everyone as this will allow us to provide new content.

Needless to say, the medical content is under annual review. We have also set up a quality circle consisting of midwives, counselors, gynecologists, and pediatricians who meet regularly to monitor and support further developments.