It is the start of yet another busy visiting day for nurse Eva Larsson, who works out of the neonatal unit at Karolinska Hospital in Huddinge, just outside Stockholm. Her first stop of the day is to Villma Frécon-Waller, who was born three months premature and has just turned one month old.

Attached to Villma’s foot is a small probe that measures her oxygen saturation and heart rate. The data is sent to her doctor via a small, wireless, portable communication unit, which utilizes the mobile phone network for data transmission. The doctor can then access the information via a web page, at the hospital or elsewhere, and use it to determine the most appropriate course of action.

Larsson, who brings a laptop with her on her home visits, can also check the baby’s progress. If she sees anything unusual, she can get advice from a doctor.

Larsson says the monitoring system helps parents feel more confident about leaving hospital.  “If parents see a change in behavior or experience something unusual with their baby, they can contact us at all hours of the day to check their status,” she says.

Villma’s mother, Lotta, was worried about leaving the hospital at first, but says the monitoring system and the home care her family have received have been a great support. “It is fantastic not having to be at the hospital,” she says. “It was, of course, important to stay there in the beginning, but after a while I couldn’t wait to return home.

“It is really comforting to know the system is there because I’m a person who worries easily and it’s nice to know that Villma is doing fine at home.”

Villma is not the youngest baby Larsson looks after. Of the 13 babies she visits during a week, some of them were born as early as week 23 and 24 (a normal pregnancy is 37 to 42 weeks). Previously, the babies would remain in the neonatal unit for up to 12 weeks, but thanks to the monitoring system and the home care service, they are now discharged two to four weeks earlier.

Doctor Mats Blennow, who is responsible for the monitoring project at Karolinska Hospital, says the system adds to the safety of the neonatal service. “We are discharging babies earlier by teaching their parents how to tube feed,” he says. “To support the families, we have nurses who visit them at home to monitor the baby’s progress. Those babies sometimes need supplementary oxygen and then we need to monitor their oxygen saturation.”

Blennow says there are many benefits to the monitoring system – both from a financial and human perspective.

“It costs the hospital about SEK 15,000 per child per day, so the earlier we can send the babies home, knowing it is safe to do so, the more we have available to spend on other crucial programs,” he says.

“But more important is that babies can receive care at home and, because you monitor them at home, you don’t get the flawed data you sometimes would in an unfamiliar setting.

“The monitoring system reduces the number of visits we have to make to families in their homes. Instead, we can check the status of the baby and monitor them from afar. If the curve is stable, we can contact them over the phone.”

Both Blennow and Larsson see big potential for the monitoring system. Larsson believes the same system could be used for older children who are sick but would like to stay at home, while Blennow says it can be used in other health cases, such as older patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “Basically, you can tailor the system to work in whatever situation you need it for,” he says.

Torunn Hansen-Tangen