Bayhealth Implements Infant Safety System that Stores Newborn Footprints
Bayhealth recently began using a new and innovative infant safety system developed by CertaScan Technologies at both of its hospitals. The proprietary system captures and stores high-resolution digital newborn footprints, which can be used for precise identification in situations like abduction, a lost baby or a natural disaster.
The infant safety system, which uses LiveScan Technology, has garnered attention and praise from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and has been included as a recommendation for hospitals in NCMEC’s most recent Infant Security guidelines.
“Our hospitals are the first in Delaware to provide this innovative service to mothers for capturing their newborn’s footprints and increasing infant safety and security,” said Bayhealth Women’s and Children’s Services Senior Director Ronnie Kopec, RN, MS, NE-BC.
The system is entirely safe for use on babies and provides outstanding newborn footprint quality. Nurses prefer the system because it is easy to use, seamless to adopt, and replaces the time-consuming and messy ink and paper method. The digital newborn footprints and accompanying security photo can be stored efficiently in the baby’s electronic health record. And, much like fingerprints, footprints are a unique biometric for each baby, so they can be used for identification throughout a lifetime.
“Footprints never change, yet inking methods do not give much detail or a permanent digital record,” said Bayhealth Women’s and Children’s Services Senior Nurse Manager Karen Kelly, MSN, RNC-OB. “The difference between the ridges change with age, but the pattern of ridges remains the same. Infant safety and security are of utmost importance for patient satisfaction.”
In addition to enhanced infant safety and security for her new child, each mother also receives an attractive certificate of her newborn’s footprints. When she returns home, she can visit the First Footprint website to enhance the certificate with colors, different fonts and borders. She can also download a digital copy of her newborn’s footprint to use to place orders on websites that offer personalized merchandise such as coffee mugs, etc. These additional benefits are provided as a free gift from Bayhealth.
“I think it’s great that we can go online and print as many certificates as we’d like as a keepsake,” said Dawn O’Connell, who was one of the first Bayhealth patients to benefit from the new system. “We don’t have original newborn footprints for our first son because it was very messy and he didn’t cooperate.”
Visit Bayhealth.org/Maternity-Obstetrics to learn more about the maternity and obstetrical care and services provided at Bayhealth.
