Safe Delivery App

Worldwide progress is stalling in advancing quality healthcare for mothers and newborns. Every other minute, a woman dies of causes related to pregnancy or birth, and every seventh second, a newborn suffers the same fate. With most of these deaths occurring in remote and fragile settings, we need to invest in overcoming barriers for reaching areas, where the needs maternal and newborn health are the largest.

The impact of maternal health extends beyond the alarming mortality figures. For every maternal death, 20-30 women suffer preventable morbidity, significantly affecting their quality of life. As advancements in health and quality of life of women benefits entire economies, ensuring safer births are not only a question of moral imperative – but also one of prosperity for some of the poorest regions in the world.

Most of the maternal mortality and morbidity is preventable when women have access to quality care provided by competent midwives. However, poor knowledge and skills and poor referral practices are critical barriers to maternity care. While the world needs an additional 900.000 midwives to ensure universal health coverage in 2030, we must also focus on enabling the current generation of midwives with the necessary skills and knowledge to provide quality care now.

This requires personnel to be educated to the international standards of the midwife, and to be fully integrated into the health system.

Effective midwifery education is essential to the provision of quality maternal and newborn care that will save lives and improve health and well-being. This is particularly critical in remote and humanitarian settings where the institutional support for quality training and upskilling for midwives is most sparce. Efforts must therefore intensify in advancing the continuous professional development of existing midwives in a tangible, sustainable, eco-friendly, equitable, and cost-effective way.

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.

Maternity Foundation offers a comprehensive range of training packages tailored to the specific needs of our partners and trainees. These include an introductory session on how to use the App, an in-depth deep dive into its features and content, in-service clinical training with simulation on one or more modules covered in the app, and Training of Trainers (ToT) programmes. The ToT packages also include sessions on adult learning principles and effective teaching methodologies. Our blended learning approach ensures cost-effectiveness and enhances learning outcomes. The App has been accredited in several countries as a digital Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course, supporting midwives in renewing their licenses.

Since 2025, the focus has been on training trainers in South Asia and the Middle East, in close collaboration with eight midwifery associations. The App is actively used in 46 countries in Asia with more than 185.000 users to date. Furthermore, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Cambodia have country-specific versions aligned to their national clinical guidelines. Those countries have – combined- more than 20.000 users and nearly 1.400 have obtained the Safe Delivery Champion certificate.

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. 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.

In the past decade, twenty SDA training modules have been developed spanning from prevention to intervention. The App has proven to be easily scalable as an accessible learning universe – particularly in low- and middle-income countries as well as humanitarian settings. Through refined micro-learning, users can access gamified content and WHO-aligned guidelines whenever needed. Designed to work in both online and offline mode, the App can reach users working in remote areas where connectivity is a challenge, and all content can be adapted to local culture and national guidelines. It therefore complements existing guidelines, training curricula and teaching methodologies.

Maternal and Newborn Health guidelines are evolving based on new evidence, new drugs and equipment, and policies. The content of the modules are adapted based on the latest WHO guidance or if there are any changes in protocols. Users of the App get notified when an updated version is available, or a new module has been released and the app is accredited for the renewal of midwives’ licenses.

Lastly, the App is being improved with AI capabilities that services the on-the-job needs of midwives.