Máxima Medical Center and Philips showcase groundbreaking family-centered Woman-Mother-Child Center

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Princess Máxima of the Netherlands opens innovative family-centered mother and child care center. Exceptional facility expands the frontiers of people-focused care for mother, father and baby.
Veldhoven, the Netherlands – Máxima Medical Center (Veldhoven, The Netherlands) and Royal Philips Electronics today showcased a groundbreaking new woman-mother- child facility that is setting new standards in the way clinical care is delivered to mother and baby. The Máxima Medical Center’s new Woman-Mother-Child Center offers comprehensive family-centered care to parents and their newborn child, before, during and after birth. As a result of the collaboration between Philips and the Máxima Medical Center, it is one of the first European centers of its kind to deliver such people-focused childbirth and neonatal care.
The Center provides a warm, intimate and supportive environment that integrates solutions for mothers and their babies throughout pregnancy, labor, delivery, postnatal, neonatal and pediatric care. It incorporates the latest clinical findings to support the baby’s growth and natural bonding process with parents, without compromising the safety or quality of care. Research  has shown that implementing family-centered and developmental care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) environment can be effective in improving infant medical outcomes, decreasing length of stay and decreasing the hospitalization costs that come with the complex care neonates need.
The new Woman-Mother-Child Center is designed to deliver a continuum of care – prenatal care, delivery, postnatal care, breastfeeding support and discharge – within one comfortable hospital room. If the mother experiences medical problems during the process, specialist clinicians visit the mother’s room instead of the mother being moved to a different department and separated from her baby. This is a concept not widely deployed in Europe. If NICU care is needed, premature babies are also kept with their mothers in private rooms during treatment and recovery. Until now, mothers have typically remained on an obstetric ward while their babies were sent to a traditional NICU.
Máxima Medical Center is also the first hospital in the world to test a new delivery experience concept developed by Philips – a design concept that supports a women and her partner during labor with interactive lighting animations and a smart phone application.
“We are extremely proud that through collaboration and innovation we can demonstrate today that it is possible to push the boundaries of what mother and child care should look like,” says Professor Dr. Guid Oei, gynecologist at Máxima Medical Center and one of the founders of the new Woman-Mother-Child Center. “We are now able to combine quality care with the vital warmth and intimacy that mother and child need before, during and after birth, even if new life starts with severe complications.”
Based on the principles of the internationally-recognized Philips Global Wee Care program, consisting of evidence-based best practices, Máxima has changed the workflow of the Center, fully shaping it around the needs and biorhythms of the mother and child while also optimizing interaction between nurses and parents. The goal is to support a healing environment, manage a baby’s stress and pain, and partner with families. The program includes positioning, caregiving and feeding premature infants.
“We have been focused on mother and baby for more than forty years, beginning with breakthroughs in fetal monitoring in 1968, neonatal physiological measurement algorithms, and NICU-specialized monitoring in the early 1970s, to thoughtfully expanding our business to include support for mothers and babies from pregnancy to the transition home,” says David Russell, General Manager, Mother & Child Care, at Philips Healthcare. “Philips’ collaboration with Máxima Medical Center demonstrates our commitment to family-centered care, which extends beyond providing only equipment. Our holistic approach encompasses education to support a clinical transformation.”