Promoting the women’s health literacy and their access to maternal-care-pathway in Italy through an integrated mHealth intervention

Abstract

Introduction: Maternal-care-pathway in Tuscany Region Italy starts with the meeting with a midwife at the family care centre, where the entire pathway is presented and the pregnancy booklet delivered, containing the prescriptions of all visits and tests recommended by the national and regional protocol for low risk pregnancies. The maternal-care-pathway is crosssectoral, involving multi-professional staff, and lasts for childbirth and post-partum period. Because of the majority of women chose to be taken in charge by gynaecologists privately, often they miss the direct link with the other public services. Short description of practice change implemented: In order to improve the quality of the maternal-care-pathway experienced by women, in terms of a better integration and continuity of care and a greater empowerment of women, the Tuscany Health Authority, in collaboration with Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa, promoted the development and experimental implemnetation of a mobile application. Aim: The final aim of the project is to understand whether and to what extent the mobile application is able to increase i the access to and the utilisation of healthcare services during the maternal-care-pathway and ii the maternal health literacy. Targeted Population and Stakeholders: Pregnant women represent the target population who are highly frequent users of mobile technologies. All professionals of maternal-care-pathway are involved in the co-design and implementation of the mHealth solution, which is used an innovative way to inform, orienting and supporting women. Timeline: The project in underway in a pilot area of Tuscany Region. Highlights: The mobile app presents the digital translation of the pregnancy booklet and the infant vaccination calendar into the internal agenda, involving alert mechanisms. Women can reserve visits and tests from the mobile app. The mobile app contains information on health promotion, prevention, healthcare services concerning pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum, divided into thematic components that women can surf. The information is also showed proactively through pop-up messages. The section including all the logistic details of primary care and hospital services, with georeferring system, first presents services related to the specific woman's residence area. The mobile app allows the access to personal health records through the embedded integration with another regional mobile app. Comments on sustainability: The mobile app has been realised in line with the regional ICT policies and based on a technological structure allowing continuing updating of all information. Comments on transferability: The mobile app has been designed to be potentially used at regional level and the results of its pilot implementation will supported the decision to deploy the mobile app. Conclusions: The pilot experimentation of the mobile app is actually involved hundreds of women who are actively using the app and are giving positive feedbacks about. Discussions: The project represents an important innovation in the maternal-care-pathway, introducing a mHealth solution as strategic tool for improving the women's health literacy and access to healthcare services. Lessons learned: The introduction of a mHealth tool integrated into the maternal-carepathway can enhance the effective utilisation of the available healthcare services, by improving the health literacy and empowerment of women.