UPenn's Intensive Care Nursery tests app for nursing mothers

The Philadelphia-based Intensive Care Nursery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania deployed Keriton, an app-based breast milk management system targeted toward nurses and new mothers.

Nurses in neonatal intensive care units spend almost 13,000 hours each year managing breast milk, according to Penn Medicine. This management process includes monitoring, labeling and logging nutritional management information for each infant patient.

To address the issue, the Intensive Care Nursery instituted the Keriton app last month. The app, now in its pilot testing phase, enables mothers to log how much breast milk they pump and enables nurses to track breast milk inventories and manage expiration dates. The app also sends new mothers reminders about pumping and connects them with lactation consultants and care providers via texts and photos.

"Logging breast milk manually is incredibly time-sensitive and prone to errors," said Kelly Convery, RN, a lactation consultant at the hospital. "For moms, having to manually keep track of when they last pumped, which side they pumped from and how much they could produce, is incredibly stressful in a time when they should be able to focus on the well-being of their child."

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