But I must hold my hand up and admit that even someone who ‘gets’ tech can struggle. In clinical practice, there are times when I haven’t felt very confident with the latest electronic maternity system – mainly because I haven’t had time to get used to it. I’ve also witnessed many conversations among nurses and midwives which have revealed a reluctance to embrace tech, for several reasons, all of them understandable.

Staff under pressure won’t necessarily have the capacity to step back and appreciate the potential of digital health – perhaps a new app that your NHS trust wants you to promote. It could feel like one more thing to take on. The heart of the problem could be a lack of awareness of how digital technology could actually help lessen some of this pressure but often even when training sessions are arranged people are pulled back onto the front line because of staff shortages.

We also have an ageing workforce and anecdotally it does seem that when a new technology is introduced, perhaps a new database which requires a lot of engagement, you’ll find people retiring early or moving to other NHS trusts.

Research by ORCHA, the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps, uncovered that, among the study sample, nurses had recommended apps to patients in only 2% of cases. But the same study found 65% of members of the public were willing to embrace digital tech, especially if it helped the NHS. Once they had tried a health app, the positive response was striking with 88% being satisfied or very satisfied.

“Let’s get digital health skills embedded into our pre and post-registration training schedules to help even the reluctant to embrace it”

So how can we join up the dots, given a new NHSX paper, What Good Looks Like, which gives solid strategic support for an acceleration towards digital health?

In midwifery, the childbearing continuum plus an increasingly complex childbearing population who are more likely to experience co-morbidities, offers multiple opportunities to incorporate digital health. Apps which provide education on pregnancy, help with core-strength development, monitor blood pressure and support those with gestational diabetes or a predisposition to pre-eclampsia, are just a few of those available. All these will help women self-manage their pregnancy from home. Baby Buddy, Nourish (wellbeing for mums) and LactApp, in particular, all achieve good scores on my ORCHA app library, so I know I can trust them.

Across NHS maternity services, we now have 150 digital midwives, whose role it is to harness the power of tech, so that women and staff can access maternity notes anytime. We should build on this with CPD accredited training. Yearly mandatory training for NHS clinical staff already includes refreshers, such as fire safety and manual handling alongside profession specifics. Let’s get digital health skills embedded into our pre and post-registration training schedules to help even the reluctant to embrace it.

And let’s give nurses and midwives apps they can trust, which they know are backed by evidence, which protect patient data and which are straightforward to use. All apps used by the NHS now have to pass the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria quality standard and this is reassuring for those on the front line.

My passion for apps began with a real success story. As a smoking cessation midwife, I recommended the free NHS Smokefree app to a heavy smoker, along with nicotine patches and regular telephone support. She quit quickly and stuck with it throughout her pregnancy and into the postnatal period. Just one example, I know, but it points to such exciting potential.

Charlotte Clayton is a midwife, PhD researcher and clinical advisor for ORCHA