JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The perinatal period is one of the most vulnerable times a woman experiences. Multidimensional, interprofessional, and personalized support is needed to improve outcomes in women’s and children’s health while strengthening partner relationships at the same time. Although a vast amount of support services already exists in Germany for psychosocial counseling during the perinatal period, groups who are especially at risk do not take advantage of them.

Objective:

Family eNav is an app-based intervention developed by experts in the field of medical and psychosocial support to help young parents navigate through primary and secondary care services in Germany according to their needs. It also empowers patient and parenting perspectives through self-education and symptom monitoring for different settings, e.g., mental health and preterm birth. While the intervention will be evaluated in a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial, the focus here lies on the conception of the app, demand among patients, and pre-use acceptance.

Methods:

During the conception phase, we conducted an explorative study with prospective users and experts in the perinatal psychosocial field to understand the need and pre-use acceptance of the intervention. We interviewed 20 participants with a semi-structured guide, analyzing the spoken through systematic text condensation. Additionally, we conducted a short survey on general questions concerning digitalization within the healthcare system among the participants.

Results:

We established two main themes: 1) healthcare and psychosocial services: access and barriers, and 2) high pre-use acceptance of app-based intervention. Healthcare and psychosocial providers indicated that there is high demand for their services, which cannot always be met immediately, and at the same time they are doubtful of reaching those individuals most in need. Prospective users and health and social care providers alike showed great interest in the perinatal navigator and suggested a variety of needs and content requirements to be included. Regionality, availability, and individualized content were underlined as success factors for high user acceptance. Barriers consisted of data protection concerns as well as denial of their own needs.

Conclusions:

Our findings show great acceptance for an app-based intervention on the part of both prospective users and service providers. Feedback on requirements and content as well as possible barriers were taken into consideration while developing the app.