INSIGHTS / Blog

SETsquared Bristol member, LatchAid has undergone a major rebrand to expand its capabilities to support families on their journey to parenthood.

The rebrand allows the app to expand its scope beyond breastfeeding to the first 1,001 days of parenthood, helping families to overcome a much broader range of challenges in line with the UK Government’s A Better Start in Life initiative. The LatchAid name lives on as the unique 3D breastfeeding support tool in the app, which helps new parents to navigate the minefield of parenting information out there to find credible information and support.

With breastfeeding rates in the UK amongst the lowest in the world, and experts saying that 90% of mothers gave up breastfeeding before they wanted to, the unique LatchAid 3D interactive animation tool coaches correct positioning and attachment anytime, anywhere, with the Anya virtual supporter on hand to answer any questions.

The Gen2 app itself has benefitted from a complete redesign and redevelopment for a fresh and sleek new look, smoother workflow, and user experience, building on user feedback from the Gen1 app launched in August 2021.

The new Anya AI virtual supporter has been built with wider, deeper, and more efficient 24/7 support from AI and from specialists, with users able to access active and historic chats. In other areas, the brand-new Insights and Explore components offer tailored articles, videos, webinars, and content to parents across the whole pregnancy, parenting and infant feeding spectrum. Virtual community groups have been expanded and offer moderated peer support. 

LatchAid Ltd. also recently announced that it had secured SBRI funding to develop additional features and content in the app to tackle healthcare inequalities in maternity care. This project will be co-developed with key NHS partners, along with groups of parents in target demographics.

The programme will expand the game-changing technology solution to address health inequalities, including more accurate and diverse 3D interactive breastfeeding animations, sentient AI with a multi-response action system to provide personalised, empathetic support, and virtual peer-to-peer support communities allowing self-selection by ethnicity, language, and other key themes supported by a diverse range of real-life specialists.

Dr. Chen Mao Davies, Founder and CEO of LatchAid, commented, “It’s been so exciting to see my baby LatchAid grow up into Anya, on both iOS and Android. We know how important access to evidence-based information and support has already been to new parents via the app. We look forward to reaching many more families inclusively with our SBRI Healthcare funding.”