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App guides pregnant women on infections, vaccinations
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Researchers at Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust developed a mobile application that educates pregnant women and new mothers about harmful infections, including influenza and whooping cough, and reminds them when they or their baby should be vaccinated, according to a press release.
The Maternal Immunations (MatImms) app provides pregnant women with a personalized vaccination schedule based on their due date that can be synced to their mobile calendar. The schedule reminds women when they can receive their own vaccinations and, after the baby is born, when the baby should be vaccinated during the first year of life.
The app also offers different levels of information about vaccines and explains how they can protect a pregnant woman’s baby through maternal antibodies. The app addresses concerns regarding vaccination by providing safety records and information on a vaccine’s ingredients.
The creators of MatImms developed the app after they found that a low proportion of pregnant women were vaccinated against whooping cough, the most common cause of death due to a vaccine-preventable disease in babies from the United Kingdom, according to the release. The researchers administered a survey to pregnant women in London between 2013 and 2014 and found that more than one-third were unaware they could receive a whooping cough vaccination. Of the 200 pregnant women surveyed, only 26% had been vaccinated against whooping cough.
Figure 1. The MatImms app (screenshot above) informs pregnant women about harmful infections and reminds them when to receive vaccination.
Source: Imperial College London
“Whooping cough can have a devastating effect on babies and some continue to die from this vaccine-preventable disease,” Beate Kampmann, PhD, professor of pediatric infection, immunity and international child health at Imperial College London, said in the release. “Our research shows that a lack of effective communication is the main reason why women do not take up the recommended vaccinations during pregnancy. Our app aims to address the communication gap by providing a one-stop shop for women to get all the information they need on the vaccines available to them during their pregnancy from health care professionals and scientists from Imperial College London.”
In addition to whooping cough, there is a low uptake of the influenza vaccine among pregnant women, according to the release. A survey of 7,800 general practices revealed that only 38.5% of pregnant women were vaccinated against influenza.
“We hope that our app can help raise awareness, increase the numbers of women having the whooping cough and flu vaccines and protect more babies,” Kampmann said.
Disclosure: The project was funded by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Center. Infectious Disease News was unable to confirm other relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.