Safe Delivery App

About the project

Last updated in September 2023

The Safe Delivery App is a smartphone application that provides skilled birth attendants with direct and instant access to evidence-based and up-to-date clinical guidelines on Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care. The App leverages the growing ubiquity of mobile phones to provide life-saving information and guidance through easy-to-understand animated instruction videos, action cards and drug lists. It can serve as a training tool both in pre- and in-service training, and equips birth attendants even in the most remote areas with a powerful on-the-job reference tool. The App was created in 2012 with support from MSD for Mothers, and in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen and the University of Southern Denmark. The App is also currently supported by the Bill [&] Melinda Gates Foundation. The content of the app is based on global clinical guidelines and has been validated with an international group of global health experts.

According to the September 2016 Lancet Maternal Health Series, it is estimated that globally three-quarters of women now deliver with assistance from a skilled birth attendant. However, it is not enough to just encourage women to give birth in health facilities, as quality of care remains a pressing issue— many facilities continue to lack emergency obstetric care (as well as even the most basic capability to manage uncomplicated deliveries) and fail to provide respectful, evidence-based routine care. This is a direct result of the fact that many skilled birth attendants do not have the skills and knowledge needed to prevent the leading causes of maternal and neonatal death. In addition many skilled birth attendants have little in the way of up-to-date, guideline-adherent, easy to understand, practical job aids to help them deal with obstetric and newborn emergencies. And for skilled birth attendants in low delivery volume facilities, emergencies do not occur sufficiently often for them to become experienced in complication management. Thus the Safe Delivery App addresses the lack of direct and instant access to evidence-based and up-to-date clinical guidelines on Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care. It addresses related issues of poor quality of care during emergency situations in childbirth and the neonatal period.

The Safe Delivery App as a tool to improve skills, knowledge and practice can be used in a variety of ways determined by the need of existing health systems, programs, facilities and individual skilled birth attendants. Examples include that it can be used continuously for learning in users’ own time, in the face of emergent need, or for refresher training. It can be very complimentary to traditional pedagogical approaches to basic emergency maternal and neonatal care training by adding a stronger visual, animated, interactive and demonstrative element to training. It is complimentary to best practices in these trainings because it promotes high frequency, low dose training in practical settings; translation of skills into practice and supervisory follow-up.

Up until now, several research papers have been published showing how the Safe Delivery App is empowering health workers and helping ensure safer births for women and their new-borns in an increasing number of countries