A secure video messaging service that ‘connects parents with their child’s progress’ in NHS neonatal units is being introduced by NHS Trusts across the country.
The original idea for the vCreate App came from a parent of a child receiving specialist neonatal care at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. Hospital staff were asked to consider video updates as a way of reassuring parents on the wellbeing of their baby at times when they were not able to be in the Neonatal Unit.
The concept for the vCreate Neonatal Video System was developed collaboratively between NHS clinicians and technology provider, vCreate, whose founder, Ben Moore, explained: “We worked with the clinical team at the Royal Hospital for Children to develop a solution to help parents of premature babies at a difficult time in their lives. We also decided that an alternative approach to funding was necessary to remove cost as a barrier to entry for hospitals that wanted to deliver the best in digital services. Making vCreate ‘free at the point of delivery’ to both patients and NHS Neonatal Units became the project’s focus.”
vCreate explains that the funding approach ‘offers charities and corporate sponsors the opportunity to sponsor vCreate for their local NHS Neonatal Unit in exchange for brand awareness, association with tech for good, and media coverage’.
The company added: “This funding model is just one example of organisations thinking creatively about how they can streamline service provision to the NHS in the wake of continuing funding shortages. A recent report by Lord Darzi, Labour Peer and world-renowned surgeon, recommended that the NHS needs another £50 bn by 2013, and that the additional funds should come from taxation.
Dr Neil Patel, consultant neonatologist at the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow, said: “vCreate’s secure video messaging service was developed by clinicians and technologists listening to the needs of families. Funding innovation in the NHS is a very real challenge. By working closely with charities, private companies, and patient families, we were able to identify a funding model without additional cost to the NHS, which enabled us to offer this valuable new service to families in neonatal units throughout the UK.”
vCreate is reportedly the first application of its kind to provide on-demand progress updates by video. It ‘forms a secure baby-care diary that builds up over time, and can be downloaded by parents as a keepsake once their baby has been discharged’.
Ben Moore added: “Our aim is to make vCreate completely cost-neutral to NHS neonatal units and parents using the service. We do this by working with individual hospital charities to find a local sponsor or benefactor that wants to fund the application for the hospital in exchange for branding on the video page seen by parents and positive PR. We’ve spent lots of time consulting with NHS units and now we think we have a model that benefits the NHS, as well as local private enterprises that want to become a force for good for their local neonatal unit.”
