The winners developed an app that makes it easier to accurately access a woman’s risk of delivering her baby early

Information Technology - Clinical Services

Winner: Division of Women’s Health, King’s Health Partners

Preterm birth is a major cause of morbidity and infant death, and affects around 7 per cent of pregnancies in the UK every year.

Its consequences include substantial emotional and financial costs to the families involved, as well as to social and health care providers – one study estimates the cost to the NHS at £2.9bn a year.

Timely interventions – such as steroids to improve the preterm baby’s lung function, and hospitalisation to ensure the birth takes place in a hospital with an appropriate level of neonatal care – can mitigate the consequences of premature birth.

However, because the impact of not intervening appropriately can be devastating, there is currently the tendency to over-treat women deemed at risk of preterm birth. This leads to vast numbers of women being admitted to hospital and being given interventions they do not require, as well as to families who really do need specialist care being unable to easily access it.

Preterm birth is a major cause of morbidity and infant death, and affects around 7 per cent of pregnancies in the UK every year

The QUiPP app makes easier to accurately access a woman’s risk of delivering her baby early. It combines the women’s background risk with the two most promising predictors of preterm birth (cervical length and quantitative foetal fibronectin, a point-of-care vaginal swab test).

When risk factors and test results are entered, the tool instantly provides an individualised percentage risk of preterm delivery. This assists clinicians, and the women they care for, in making appropriate management decisions.

The predictive model within the app has been proven to be highly accurate, permitting safe hospital discharge in the majority of women tested, and improved detection of those likely to deliver early.

Judges’ comment: Intense effort has resulted in an easy to use application with big potential results.

Highly commended: Health & Social Care Information Centre

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Revealed: 2016 winners of the HSJ Value Awards