An app for prenatal care was created at UCundinamarca

This is a project that was carried out in the Girardot branch in the Nursing program, through which a community network for maternal-prenatal care was created, where community leaders, the IPS that attend to pregnant mothers of the municipality, the Health Secretariat and researchers from UCundinamarca participate, all with the aim of attending, in a direct way, to pregnant mothers.

The creation of the APP, which stems from this project, seeks to facilitate communication between members of the network, achieving direct and private contact, which allows pregnant women to resolve doubts or situations that may put their lives or the lives of their babies at risk.

For its part, the application also plays an important role in georeferencing since, with its use, in a simple and intuitive language, pregnant women can be located and monitored permanently in real time.

“The goal is to improve healthcare with this instant messaging application that connects the entire support network. This project stems from our experience working at the Adolescent and Youth Friendly Unit, monitoring maternal risk among adolescents in the municipality,” stated Professor Carlota Castro Quintana, the project's lead researcher.

The project, which was selected in the 2019 UCundinamarca call for proposals and is funded with the university's science and technology resources, has already successfully completed its pilot testing phase. This phase was carried out with pregnant mothers from the Chicoral district in the municipality of Espinal – Tolima, accompanied by its Health Secretariat. Three students from the UCundinamarca Nursing program participated as research assistants, along with the healthcare providers (IPS) to which the pregnant women belonged. The project successfully visited and supported 27 pregnant women from 10 neighborhoods and 4 rural communities in the district.

It is worth mentioning that, as part of this initiative, Carlota Castro, a professor in the Nursing program at the Girardot branch, has participated in the project as the principal investigator and designer of the network structure; as well as Cristian Serrano, a Systems Engineer from UCundinamarca, who was in charge of the application design, and nursing student Carlos Alberto Reina, as a research assistant in fieldwork along with five other students from the program who are currently participating in the project.

Thus, following the pilot program, the initiative is now being implemented in Girardot this year. “Since January, we have been working in this municipality in partnership with the five healthcare providers (IPS) present here and part of the network, reaching five districts and serving 130 pregnant women to date. These women have been identified, visited, and assessed, and we can communicate with them through MaternAPP,” stated research professor Castro.

This work, through this community network and mediated by technology, becomes the possibility of improving the health care of pregnant mothers with prenatal monitoring, which allows for the activation of early warnings in these women.

“Through academic development, with the core focus on Sexual Health in conjunction with the research group 'Integrative Training of Young Researchers,' we have ensured that our students understand that integration strengthens a primary care model by working with our communities,” Castro concluded.

More news from the Girardot branch at the News Agency