Tracking technology gets the right milk to new babies

Milk360 system uses innovative tech to prevent neonatal babies receiving either expired breast milk or milk from the wrong mother.  

Healthcare staff at Liverpool Women’s Hospital are about to start using new breast-to-baby tracking technology to ensure that new babies receive the right milk. Not only does the system ensure they get expressed breast milk (EBM) from the right mother, it also ensures that the milk has not expired, That’s important because, in the worst cases, expired EBM can lead to fatalities. 

Photo by Rainier Ridao

The team behind Milk360 say it can help to prevent mistakes that currently plague some NHS trust hospitals, which have the potential for costly claims for compensation. Indeed, just six weeks ago there were reports of a newborn boy in a hospital in the southwest of England being given EBM ‘from another donor in error’, due to a mix-up at the hospital while his mother was undergoing an iron transfusion. 

The Infant Journal has reported a further 13 cases of infants receiving the wrong mother’s EBM over a six-year period in hospitals in the same region. 

To counter this serious problem – and make life easier for staff – Milk360 uses tracking technology to manage the safe collection of milk from a mother’s breast and then keep tabs on delivery to the child in the incubator. This entails ‘cold-chain management’, monitoring the temperature of the EBM through its journey, as well as checking that it has not expired and logging any additives made. 

EBM is officially classified as a body fluid and so must be handled at all times by up to two health care professionals (HCPs) with appropriate competence. At minimum, one of these should be a registered nurse or birthing specialist who is also a member of staff in the hospital area. Across the UK it is recommended that a two-person checking procedure is used for EBM at all stages of the process.  

To facilitate this procedure, the Milk360 manages the booking-in of the mother and her infant(s), and in doing so generates labels to uniquely identify her milk for her babies. This unique identification is then used to manage expiry dates and stock levels. 

Matt McAlister, Founder and Managing Director of tech company MSoft, the developer of Milk360, says: ‘Expired breast milk can be incredibly dangerous if given to a baby. Bacteria can grow and make it unsafe for the baby and it can leave a child incredibly sick and unwell. In the worst-case scenario could even lead to a baby mortality. Additionally, all sorts of essential nutrients and antibodies are also passed from the mother’s milk so it’s vital the right milk is delivered to the right baby. 

‘Unless hospitals make changes to the way they are administering EBM then, sadly, we are likely to see more cases of mistakes being made. Errors can happen for lots of reasons. Some wards are overstretched, they may be grappling with budgetary pressures and the issue of managing EBM may be low on the agenda. Hospitals may also have systems where they just manually manage the issue and hope they don’t make mistakes. Now they have a way of ensuring they can deliver a better service for mothers and for babies.’ 

‘This really, really matters because from the parents’ point of view, we must remember this is a donated human product and it needs to be treated as such. It’s a finite resource that’s been provided for the baby to allow that baby to grow and leave the neonatal ward in a healthy state. To do that, healthcare staff need to make sure that they’re feeding these vulnerable, neonates with EBM from their mother and that it hasn’t expired. 

‘The maternity healthcare environment now accepts that mistakes are made and that technology can help to eliminate those errors with experience and knowledge. In many cases the babies on neonatal wards are so small they can’t have wristbands on. It’s very difficult for nurses to uniquely identify these babies. So we have a process where we either scan a barcode on the incubator, or we ask a number of questions of the nursing staff before they administer milk.  

‘NHS staff are human beings and they make mistakes like you and I. This system is like having a guardian angel on the shoulder as a second checker.’ 

In related news:

It might not be coming home but football’s helping vulnerable children

Worlds first brain implant fitted to control epilepsy seizures

Thousands of children under five admitted to London’s hospitals with breathing difficulties