An worldwide analysis crew from Tanzania and Japan created a smartphone app and performed a pilot examine of how the app may be used to enhance midwives’ information and expertise in Tanzania. Their examine centered on the app’s potential results on the educational outcomes of midwives and start preparedness of pregnant ladies in Tanzania.

The crew’s work is revealed within the journal PLOS ONE on March 31, 2023.

The smartphone app for midwives confirmed vital enhancements of their studying outcomes, main to higher start preparations for pregnant ladies in Tanzania. This examine highlights the potential of leveraging expertise to reinforce midwife training, in the end contributing to maternal well being and addressing excessive maternal and youngster mortality charges,”

Yoko Shimpuku, Professor, Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima University

Pregnant ladies in sub-Saharan Africa have low entry to healthcare. In Tanzania, solely 51% of pregnant ladies have 4 or extra antenatal care visits, whereas the World Health Organization recommends at the least eight visits throughout being pregnant. Because of Tanzania’s excessive maternal mortality ratio, it’s essential to extend ladies’s entry to healthcare. To enhance ladies’s entry, the standard of antenatal care must be improved.

The crew used a mixed-methods examine to offer an academic app for midwives within the intervention group. They obtained information concerning the steady use of the app and measured midwives’ studying outcomes. Their subsequent step was to conduct focus group discussions on the usability of the app and surveys amongst pregnant ladies about start preparedness within the intervention and management teams to guage if the midwives had supplied them with correct data. The management group of pregnant ladies obtained common antenatal care and answered the identical survey.

The examine included 23 midwives who took half within the testing and supplied studying final result information. Their outcomes confirmed that 87.5% of the midwives continued to review with the app two months post-intervention. There had been 207 pregnant ladies included within the examine. The intervention group of pregnant ladies had considerably increased information scores and home-based worth scores than did the ladies within the management group, the place the app was not used. This home-based worth rating signifies that the upper the rating, the extra ladies tended to choose giving start at a well being facility as an alternative of at dwelling.

From conducting earlier research, the analysis crew knew that there’s intensive smartphone use in Tanzania, particularly among the many inhabitants of youthful folks. The app the crew developed supplied up to date data on World Health Organization tips and sensible recommendations for midwives to make use of for well being training at antenatal care visits. They performed the examine in two well being services in Dar es Salaam, the biggest metropolis in Tanzania, between October 2019 and March 2021.

The midwives utilizing the app obtained coaching on tips on how to use it. They had been additionally reimbursed for the price of the cell information they used with the app, in order that the associated fee wouldn’t hinder them from utilizing the app. The app used a web-based training platform known as Goocus. The data on the app included World Health Organization suggestions on antenatal and intrapartum take care of pregnant ladies. The crew additionally created content material with domestically tailored illustrations explaining why preventative behaviors or early remedy had been essential and displaying midwives tips on how to reveal these ideas of their antenatal care. The movies on the app had been narrated in Kiswahili, a language most native ladies understood higher than English.

Looking forward, the crew’s subsequent step is to refine and broaden the app for larger-scale implementation, centered on lowering maternal and youngster mortality charges in growing international locations, beginning with Tanzania. “The ultimate goal is to develop additional apps targeting pregnant women and their families, while accumulating robust evidence on the app’s long-term effects and effectiveness through further research. This aims to enhance overall understanding and awareness of care from pregnancy to postpartum, ultimately improving maternal health,” mentioned Shimpuku.