IWK Health, Cisco Canada and OnX ​​Canada Partner to Connect NICU Families with Web-Delivered Application

IWK Health has partnered with Cisco Canada and OnX ​​Canada to connect neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) families to education, support, and resources with the web-delivered application Chez NICU Home.

The platform, along with virtual care via Cisco Webex video devices, enables parents to be more actively involved in their baby’s care while the baby is in the NICU.

“Chez NICU Home has two components,” said Lisa DeWolfe, project manager for digital and client services at IWK Health.

The first part is a website that offers virtual education and resources for families, allowing them to track their infant’s progress.

“They just sign up for this website and they can read it anytime, anywhere, on their favorite device, and it also reinforces the teaching. And so much more, and it prepares you for discharge,” says DeWolfe.

The second component is the video conferencing system. Each room is equipped with a DX80, a Webex all-in-one video conferencing device.

“We use WebEx as our meeting platform, so when each family member enters the unit, they are provided with their own meeting to share with them. , is one way to hold your baby skin-to-skin,” she said.

The meeting platform also helps relatives attend clinical rounds virtually via Webex and get updates on their baby’s progress.

“Even if the baby is healthy enough to leave the IWK NICU, it may not be healthy enough to go home. One is that we can actually participate from our home hospital and get to know the baby and the family.

This process has improved communication. For example, instead of sending information about a baby to another nurse and then to another doctor, the clinical team gets all that information at once from the primary source.

Because the program deals with patient health information, the company has gone through a testing and review process to ensure the system is secure and not easily hacked, said director of digital and client services at the IWK Health Center. One Denise Lalanne said. .

According to the company, patient feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with 97% of users agreeing that the lessons provided through the online learning feature were helpful. Chez NICU Home has helped over 450 families in the NICU.

For example, a mother unexpectedly gave birth early and her husband was unable to come to the public health center due to work. With the help of Chez NICU Home, families were able to connect virtually instantly.

The platform will also help families with other children at home keep track of babies when they can’t be together.

“One of the things that really helped this particular mother was that she had an older child at home and was able to go home and take that child to school while participating in a virtual tour. She didn’t have to miss out on the important information they had for the baby in the morning… “She didn’t have to be in two places at once,” DeWolfe said. I think she really appreciated video conferencing in that situation.”

Virtual medicine has become increasingly popular during the course of the pandemic. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telemedicine surged as consumers and providers sought ways to access and deliver care safely. A McKinsey and Company survey found that 84% of his physicians offered virtual visits last year, and 57% would continue to do so.

Lalanne added that healthcare technology will continue to evolve and grow.

“It’s definitely something that we foresee growing within healthcare, naturally because we think it really helps the patient experience….they [patients] No need to wait for a call to make an appointment. They can go and book themselves,” she said.