Severance Hospital said it has developed "Smart Mom Care," a maternity care model that offers personalized medical support tailored to the unique characteristics of individual expectant mothers, based on their pregnancy stage and condition.

The project was supported under the "2022 Smart Hospital Leading Model Development Support Project” by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute.

In recent years, due to a declining birthrate, large obstetrics-gynecology hospitals have become concentrated in big cities, causing inconvenience to expectant mothers. 

This is especially true as the number of high-risk pregnancies due to older maternal age has increased.

Severance Hospital has developed Smart Mom Care, a digital solution that provides care for high-risk expectant mothers throughout pregnancy and childbirth.

The solution has established a smart care environment from pre-delivery to post-delivery, which includes remote collaboration between medical institutions, online counseling for expectant mothers and guardians, and maternal education.

If a pregnant woman requires additional management such as discussing symptoms or test results, even after visiting a primary healthcare provider, she can do so through a video consultation with the patient, her guardian, and the primary healthcare provider via MS Teams.

High-risk expectant mothers can monitor and manage their health in a mobile environment through a wearable device connected to the My Severance App, depending on the pregnancy stage or condition, without the need to visit the hospital.

With a hospital-issued smartwatch, high-risk expectant mothers can receive alerts through the application in the event of an emergency, such as low or high blood pressure or a dangerous situation, even when they are at home, and provide guidance on what to do.

Expectant mothers and caregivers can access timely education on pregnancy and childbirth through the app before giving birth, as well as receive follow-up consultations.

If they have additional questions about the videos, they can ask them directly through the application.

When a high-risk pregnant woman is hospitalized, healthcare providers, including doctors and nurses, can monitor her symptoms in real-time via the hospital dashboard.

In the event of an emergency, the hospital's emergency response team is alerted and responds to ensure safe delivery.

The application also automatically reminds patients of their schedules, such as meals and exercise.

Users can also ask questions they may have missed during their rounds through the mobile app's Ask a Doctor feature.

After childbirth, it is possible to connect with local hospitals or home care projects to provide timely care for mothers and newborns.

The hospital has already provided the application to 200 soon-to-be mothers receiving treatment at Severance Hospital's obstetrics and gynecology department, with 98 percent of users using the application responding that they were satisfied with the application.

The hospital also conducted a satisfaction survey on real-time monitoring and scheduling for 50 hospitalized mothers.

The average satisfaction rate was 85.3 percent for three factors -- real-time monitoring for high-risk mothers, mobile-based pre- and post-operative customized scheduling, and communication channels between healthcare professionals and patients, and caregivers.

"In the short term, we plan to improve patient experience and the well-being of pregnant women and their fetuses by communicating with them through the application," said Professor Kim Yong-wook, who is in charge of the project. "In the mid-to-long-term, we plan to implement people-centered healthcare through digital convergence in the medical field and linking it with local communities,"

The hospital will strive to upgrade Smart Mom Care as a leading model for smart hospitals and help pregnant women across the country, Kim added.