Maternity care relies on close coordination between a wide range of professionals. Midwives work alongside obstetricians, anaesthetists, neonatal teams, theatres, laboratories, pharmacists and other specialist services, often across different wards, sites and shifts.
As maternity services become increasingly digital, communication technology has an important role in helping these teams stay connected. A secure clinical communication platform can make it easier to reach the right person, share relevant information and maintain visibility across complex care pathways.
Digital midwifery covers a wide range of technologies, from electronic patient records and remote monitoring to digital communication and clinical workflow tools.
Each plays a different role. Electronic records help staff access and document patient information, while monitoring tools can support observation outside traditional care settings. Clinical communication platforms help connect the people involved in delivering care.
For maternity teams, this can be particularly valuable. Staff may need to escalate a concern, request specialist input, coordinate a transfer or update several teams at once. When communication relies on pagers, personal messaging applications or knowledge of individual contact details, finding the right person can take longer and provide limited confirmation that a message has been received.
Digital communication gives teams a more structured way to coordinate activity across services.
Maternity services are fast-moving environments where staff availability and responsibilities change throughout the day.
Role-based communication helps teams reach the person currently responsible for a service or clinical function, rather than relying solely on an individual’s name or personal contact details. This can reduce the time spent searching directories, contacting switchboard or trying several people before reaching the appropriate colleague.
Through Alertive, maternity teams can communicate with defined roles and groups, supporting clearer coordination across wards, departments and sites.
This can help staff:
Maternity pathways often involve several professional groups. A patient may move between antenatal services, maternity triage, labour ward, theatres, postnatal care and neonatal services, while also requiring input from diagnostics or specialist clinical teams.
Communication needs to follow the pathway and connect everyone involved.
A dedicated clinical platform gives staff a consistent channel for sharing updates, coordinating action and requesting support. This can be especially useful where several teams need to contribute to the same episode of care or where staff are working across multiple locations.
Alertive also supports communication beyond maternity services, helping midwives connect with the wider workforce involved in supporting patients and families.
Maternity communication may involve sensitive clinical information, so healthcare organisations need tools designed around security, governance and accountability.
Alertive provides a dedicated platform for healthcare staff to communicate and share relevant information securely. It also maintains a record of communication activity, giving organisations greater visibility than informal channels or legacy communication methods.
Auditability can be valuable when teams need to understand:
Some situations in maternity care require a rapid response. When a concern is escalated, staff need confidence that the message has reached the correct team and visibility over whether it has been acknowledged.
Alertive enables priority-based communication, helping staff distinguish urgent requests from routine activity. Messages can be directed to defined roles or responder groups, with acknowledgement providing greater visibility over the response.
This supports a clearer escalation process and helps teams understand whether further action may be needed.
This helps support clearer handovers, coordinated working and review of clinical communication pathways.
Nancy Fontaine, former Chief Nurse at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, described her experience of using Alertive across the professional groups within her portfolio:
Former Chief Nurse
I would rate Alertive with five stars. Now, I can say that because I was set up very early on, and I use it with all of the nursing, midwifery and clinical professionals teams – so that’s all the 14 allied health professions, pharmacy and the healthcare scientists because those individuals sit in my portfolio. I have had nothing but a good experience from the minute I was put on the application of Alertive. So I love it.
Her experience highlights the value of communication that connects professional groups across an organisation. For maternity teams, this means being able to communicate with the wider clinical and operational workforce involved in delivering care.
Digital midwifery will continue to evolve as NHS organisations develop more connected systems and pathways.
Technology works best when it responds to the realities of clinical practice. For maternity teams, that means tools that are secure, straightforward to use and capable of supporting communication across different professions, locations and levels of urgency.
By enabling role-based, priority-led and auditable communication, Alertive helps maternity teams stay connected with the people they need and coordinate care across complex pathways.
