Holistic preconception care: Providing real-time guidance via a mobile app to optimise maternal and child health.

Introduction: Preconception is a critical period to optimise gamete function and early placental development, essential for successful conception and long-term maternal-child health. However, there is a lack of preconception services and consequently, global fertility rates continue to fall and mothers embark on their pregnancy journey in poor health. There is an urgent need to implement a holistic community-level preconception care programme to optimise risk factors for poor fecundability and improve long-term maternal-child health.
Method: We reviewed current evidence on fecundability lifestyle risk factors, the efficacy of existing preconception interventions and the use of digital platforms for health optimisation, to create a new digital-based preconception intervention model that will be implemented via an app. We present the theory, content and mode of delivery of this holistic model targeting couples planning for pregnancy.
Results: We propose a new model featuring a user-friendly mobile app, which enables couples to self-assess fecundability risks through a personalised risk score that drives a tailored management plan. This tiered management provides anticipatory guidance supported by evidence-based recommen-dations, and promotes ongoing engagement for behavioural optimisation and specialist referrals as required. Based on the health belief model, this new model delivered with a mobile app seeks to shift couples' perceptions about their susceptibility and severity of subfertility, benefits of making a change and barriers to change.
Conclusion: Our proposed digital-based intervention model via a mobile app stands to enhance preconcep-tion care by providing personalised risk assessments, real-time feedback and tiered management to optimise preconception reproductive health of couples. This model forms a reference content framework for future preconception care intervention delivery.
Competing Interests: This research was supported by the KKH Health Services Model of Care Transformation Fund (MoCTF) Grant (MoCTF/01/2020, MoCTF/02/2020 and MoCTF/03/2020) and the Lien Foundation Optimising Maternal and Child Health Programme Fund. The funding body did not influence either the data collection and analysis or the writing and the decision to submit the manuscript. CWK and JKYC are supported by the National Medical Research Council, Ministry of Health, Singapore (NMRC/MOH-000596-00 and NMRC/CSASI-008-2016, MOH-001266-01, MOH-001221-01 and MOH-000932-01, respectively). KMG is supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR Senior Investigator (NF-SI-0515-10042), NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre (IS-BRC-1215-20004), British Heart Foundation (RG/15/17/3174) and the European Union (Erasmus+ Programme ImpENSA 598488-EPP-1-2018-1-DE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP).