Two hospitals add baby scanning technology

FORT COLLINS and LOVELAND — UCHealth has teamed up with CertaScan Technologies LLC to create electronic identification records of newborn babies’ feet.

The health-care company will use CertaScan Technologies at UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins and UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland — the first in Colorado to use the technology to scan footprints electronically minutes after birth.

Much like fingerprints, footprints have a ridge pattern that stays the same through a person’s life. While the space between those ridges may change over time, the unique pattern will remain.

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The newborn footprints captured at PVH and MCR are stored in a database and can later be used to help identify the baby in emergency situations, said Laura Hall, clinical director for Women’s and Pediatric Care for UCHealth in northern Colorado.

Footprints are easier to capture than a newborn’s clenched handprint, health-care workers said. Hospitals began capturing newborn footprints around 1960, according to a New York Times article. The newborn footprints, along with a mother’s fingerprints, became part of the hospital’s records as a requirement by states to help prevent mix-ups in hospital nurseries.

“What they found in the 1980s is less than 5 percent of the newborn footprints could be used for identification. So the law changed,” according to David Yarnell, CEO of CertaScan Technologies, based in Fairfield, Conn.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children still recommends that hospitals capture a baby’s footprints. According to 2016 survey done by the center, about 90 percent of hospitals still do so, but through traditional ink-and-paper or inkless paper method.

While not a common crime, according to NCMEC, the abduction of an infant from a health-care facility is still a subject of concern. To help prevent a newborn leaving the hospital with anyone other than the parents, hospitals have systems in place, including wristband alarm systems. The electronically scanned footprint is an added security measure that has a lifelong benefit, Yarnell said.

“An electronic record of a newborn’s footprint could help in situations like in Tempe, Ariz., where a baby was found in a shopping cart,” he said. “Or in cases of natural disasters — hurricanes, floods, fires — where a child may be found not with the parents.”

PVH and MCR are two of the 72 U.S. hospitals using the new technology.