Reykjavik Birth Center and dala.care receive a government grant to develop postnatal home care solution
Reykjavík Birth Center and dala.care received a Fléttan grant from the Ministry of University, Industry and Innovation to develop a customizable home care solution to simplify and improve services for mothers and their children during the first days after birth.?
Midwives Emma Swift and Embla Guemundsdóttir at Reykjavík Birth Center are active in teaching and research in their field. Their work aims to improve the experience and health of mothers and children during the childbearing process. Early 2023 they started looking at possible implementations of a home care solution with dala.care, which had been primarily designed to service the elderly.?
Midwives work as independent contractors in home care 10 days after each birth. In Iceland, about 300 children are born every month, and with each birth, a process is initiated to find an available midwife. The service is accompanied by considerable communication and recording of data, which is then returned to the National Health Service. The goal of the development project is to significantly simplify this work and thus save the time spent on things other than delivering quality service.?
In addition, efforts will be made to improve communication and cooperation between parents and midwives, as measurements and other information related to the first days after birth are recorded in the dala.care app. In this way, the pressure on both parents and midwives can be relieved during these important first days, as well as improving services overall and ensuring the correct recording of information.
"It was a pleasant surprise that a system that was designed around services for the elderly could in many ways meet the needs of home care for newborns. We are very grateful for this grant, but it will be used to customize care plans and activities for midwives based on the good work that has been done in this country over the years," says Finnur Pálmi Magnússon, Head of product at dala.care?
"Midwives have long been looking for solutions to the challenges involved in planning and registering home care services, and it is therefore a special celebration to have the opportunity to adapt the system at dala.care to the services we provide at home" says Emma Marie Swift, midwife at Reykjavík Birth Center. "We are very much looking forward to the collaboration and to seeing the midwives' wish for a better system come true," adds Embla Guemundsdóttir. Embla is also a midwife at Reykjavík Birth Center.?
About Fléttan?
Fléttan is a grant awarded to innovative companies that have created interesting solutions to improve services for patients, shorten waiting lists and increase the efficiency of the system. The grants are allocated to projects that support the implementation of innovation in health technology, products and services. The grants are competitive grants and are allocated to projects for one year at a time.?
About Reykjavík Birth Center?
Reykjavík Birth Center offers continuous and individualized services for families who are expecting a child or have recently had a child. There is a team of midwives who have set themselves the goal of providing good education and professional, personal service.?
About dala.care?
dala.care is a home care solution developed by Gangverk. The system is based on the company's experience in developing a home service solution for the American market and has recently been adapted to Icelandic conditions. dala.care is designed to relieve managers and staff who manage and provide home care.?