Five Questions and an Elevator Pitch: Motherly

1. What is the need that your project seeks to address?

Tatum: Our team was initially motivated by an alarming statistic — Black mothers are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes, compared to their white counterparts. We were struck by the clear racial discrepancies in maternal mortality and decided to dig into what was causing these deaths among Black moms. We found that lack of postpartum support was one of the main driving factors. We decided to do more research and we found that, after giving birth, moms were receiving basic guidance on how to care for their babies, but they weren't being taught how to care for themselves.

They would come home from the hospital and not know what to expect with regard to their own health — like anxiety and postpartum depression, hypertension, or infection. They didn't know what was normal or when to reach out for help and, because of that, they were suffering silently. In fact, about 40 percent of moms don't attend a postpartum check-up. We wanted to dig into this specific need area, the postpartum period, and the under-utilization of care during this time. 

2. How does your solution work?

Tatum: It's still in the early stages of development, but Motherly has two sides to it. On one end, it's a patient education tool. It tells moms what to expect through a community tab where they can interact with other moms and learn from their experiences. It gives them evidence-based information and modules to learn about postpartum conditions, symptoms to expect, and when to reach out to their OB or physician for help.

Motherly also is a remote patient monitoring, or RPM, solution, which allows moms to track their symptoms and stay in touch with their healthcare providers during the postpartum period. Motherly helps to maintain a more consistent stream of communication between patient and provider and, in doing so, dismantles some of the medical mistrust that's especially common among moms, postpartum, particularly in communities of color.

3. What motivated you to take on the project? And what activities have you undertaken?

Tatum: I had previous interest in medical devices, but I had never explored digital solutions, so I decided to take the Biodesign for Digital Health course. We were given a vignette related to maternal health. One of our team members suggested this niche area of racial discrepancies, so we went from there.

Our project has evolved so much since the class ended in the fall. We spent our time over the winter quarter digging into the need, understanding it through interviews, surveys, and secondary research. At one point, we thought about a Medicaid reimbursement tool for midwives and birthing centers. But we’ve done a complete 180 and arrived at a point where we have a good idea of what the need is and how we can address it.

Towards the very end of the quarter, I decided to do some more research on the patient side of things, which I have since learned is extremely important beyond interviewing physicians, midwives, and providers. Patients are at the center of everything. We sent out a survey through social media and received responses from 55 moms about their postpartum grievances. They were from different racial backgrounds, across the US, and split between public and private insurance. They all echoed the same feeling of being left behind by maternal healthcare. These moms said that they had been tossed aside by their providers, and their mental health concerns had been dismissed. Perhaps the providers were focusing on the baby, but not on the mom.

4. What’s the most important thing you learned in advancing your project?

Tatum: The patient perspective is so important. I wish we had done that patient-centered research earlier in the quarter to get those insights sooner and confirm what we had been reading online. Whether it's in the research phase or the design phase, it’s important to involve the patients who will use the solution.

5. What advice do you have for other aspiring health technology innovators?

Tatum: Getting a solid picture of the need you're solving for is the most important part. It's something we hear all the time from our Stanford Biodesign instructors. Putting it into practice is essential. It's much smarter to invest your time and resources into the needs-finding stage than trying out a solution, putting a lot of time and effort into it, and realizing there's no market for it or that it doesn’t solve the most important need.