Babies born with complex congenital heart disease (e.g. half a working heart) have their first stage of cardiac surgery in the first few days after birth. These babies are very fragile during the first year of life. The interstage period between the first and second stage of surgery is a challenging time. Many parents take their babies home during this time but worry that they will not know what to do or who to contact for advice if their baby deteriorates suddenly. This novel parental early warning tool (the first of its kind in the UK) helps parents to articulate their worries and concerns to HCPs, initiating timely intervention and thereby improving patient safety, quality of care and patient outcomes.
Research Aims
CHAT2 is a parental early warning tool for use at home following discharge from hospital after their baby’s first heart surgery. Babies with complex heart conditions have their initial heart surgery in the first week of life and second stage before one year. These babies remain delicate after surgery and in the early weeks after discharge home. For parents, taking their baby home and starting a home life is often a scary time. Understanding what to look for and what to seek help with can be confusing. If everything is well the daily CHAT2 will score green, if something about their baby changes, the CHAT2 scores amber (parents phone ward for advice) and if the changes are in the red column, this indicates an emergency (parents’ phone 999). The CHAT2 shows when things are normal and when to seek help from healthcare professionals because something about their baby has changed.
Parents can be worried about managing frequent monitoring and how to transfer information to their baby’s clinical team. Our initial prototype CHAT2 mobile application (called CHAT2MA) showed that using a smartphone application to help parents record observations and make decisions about their baby wherever they are, was possible. Using technology to send this important information to their healthcare professionals (HCP), allows immediate communication and management of changing situations more quickly. Identifying how technology can be used to provide individualised care and improve outcomes in congenital heart disease is in the top 10 UK research priorities. Further development of the pre-clinical CHAT2MA and meeting medical device regulations is important to meet this priority research area.
Project Team
- Professor Kerry Gaskin, Birmingham City University
- Dr Chris Bowers, University of Worcester
- Professor Jo Wray, Great Ormond Street Hospital London and University College London
- Dr Tristan Ramcharan, Paediatric Cardiologist, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital
- Dr Anna Seale, Fetal and Paediatric Cardiologist, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital
- Suzie Hutchinson, Little Hearts Matter
- Rajwant Kaur Singh, Children’s Heart Federation
Funding
We are currently being supported through the SPARK The Midlands global accelerator programme and will be applying for the next round of NIHR funding.
Previous funding has been through NIHR i4iFAST, The Health Foundation, Heart Research UK and The University of Worcester.
Contact
For more information on the research project, please contact Professor Kerry Gaskin Kerry.gaskin2@bcu.ac.uk