The e-Perinatal Team has presented their protocol study for the pilot trial of e-Perinatal in Open Research Europe. The publication posed a current situation: although perinatal mental health disorders have a heavy impact on both families and healthcare systems, mental health services keep being hard to reach due to structural barriers. Therefore, mobile health (mHealth) interventions can provide a convenient measure, but it is a little-researched topic, with limited assessments in real-world practice.

The study is titled A personalized mHealth intervention for the universal prevention of perinatal mental disorders in routine maternal care (e-Perinatal): A protocol study for a hybrid feasibility pilot trial. The e-Perinatal app, a personalized mHealth innovation for universal perinatal mental disorders prevention, has had a two-arm, cluster randomised (in eight Primary Heathcare Andalusian Centres), hybrid type 1 pilot trial. It aimed to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of the app.

There were two target groups: pregnant or postpartum women and their partners; and healthcare professionals involved in routine maternal care, who received specialized training.

The pilot trial will give us essential insights into the feasibility of incorporating our e-Perinatal app into routine maternal care, providing the basics for the development and implementation of a future large-scale trial.