NICU-2-HOME: Using HIT to Support Parents of NICU Graduates Transitioning Home

After 2-3 months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), mothers and fathers of Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) infants face discharge home with trepidation. Having a VLBW infant that has survived to discharge, these parents now must perform a myriad of health care tasks once at home, yet parents often feel ill-prepared, uninformed, and unskilled to provide this care. The goal of this exploratory research is to develop and pilot the NICU-2-Home service, a health information technology (IT) concept centered on the smart phone that will be created with researchers at Motorola. NICU-2-Home will provide support to parents of VLBW infants as they transition from the NICU to their homes and eventually establish a medical home with the infant's pediatrician. Phase 1 of this research uses qualitative methods and an iterative process to design the NICU-2-Home content service that will support parents as they transition to home from the NICU through interviews with the major stakeholders: parents, neonatal physicians, neonatal staff, and community pediatricians. Phase 2 evaluates NICU-2-Home as parents are transitioning to home and includes a feasibility study with randomization to pilot test the ability of NICU-2-Home to (a) improve parent's self-efficacy and confidence in caring for their VLBW infant, (b) decrease parental stress, and (c) enhance involvement with their VLBW infants compared to controls.