Newborn Baby Tracking Solutions
The Maternity Ward is a place for joy and celebration as new family members are welcomed into the world. The ward staff shares some of this joy by playing their part throughout the labor and the post-partum care of mother and newborn child. However anxiety levels rise for the patients, families and staff when there are complications during the labor and/or when the newborn needs neonatal care. In many of these instances the baby and the mother need to be separated, a scenario that creates anxiety. Anxiety can easily turn to anger and a possible law suit when there is a mother-baby mix up; the wrong baby being sent to the wrong mother for the crucial early bonding period, breast-feeding.   

RFID technology will help both these difficult and challenging situations. At the time of admittance the mother is provided with a patient’s RFID tag that will start the process of tracking all procedures relevant to that labor. Once the child is born, an ankle tag is provided to the baby as well and immediately cross-referenced to the baby’s mother and the mother’s tag.

Family Access to Babies in Neonatal Care:

In the case of the newborn needing neonatal care, family members are almost as anxious as the new mother, to greet and bond with the new family member. When the newborn needs to be in an intensive care unit (ICU) this becomes very difficult due to the restricted access in the ICU. RFID solves this problem by making available to families the ability to view on a computer monitor outside of the ICU the key data about the baby, a photograph, the height, weight, skin color and temperature after keying in, for example, the mother’s family name and first name.

Mother-Baby Mix-ups Eliminated:
Even when the mix up is uncovered moments after the mistake is made, this can cause heightened levels of anger and dissatisfaction with the services rendered. Any mother-baby mix up is a potential liability to the hospital. This scenario can be eliminated when staff follows a procedure of reading the baby’s RFID tag and then reading the mother’s RFID tag and re-confirming the match that was initiated at the birth.