Supporting improved maternity care by midwives: Design opportunities and lessons learned

Abstract

In this paper we describe a study about the role of Information Technology (IT) on the quality of maternity care in the midwifery centres in the Netherlands. We conducted an interview study with midwives in the Netherlands. The objective was to understand the current situation, challenges and design opportunities that could help to provided improved healthcare. The results of the interview study show that the current prenatal care system suffer from some challenges such as proper IT support, lack of IT training for the midwives, lack of integrity between different software systems used in the midwifery centres and hospitals and attitude of the pregnant mothers. Based on our findings we provide some recommendations and design implications to support improved care provided by the midwives. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.