A pregnancy app developed in Ireland has been nominated as Best Educational Tablet App in the annual Webby awards in the US, which counts Dell, Deloitte and Internet Explorer among its sponsors.

The app, which beat strong competition from 12,000 applications including firms such as Disney, is called Life in the Womb.

It was developed by the Science Picture Company in Dublin in consultation with the National Maternity Hospital(NMH).

It features striking three-
dimensional (3D) images that detail the week-by-week development of the baby.

Viewers can click on any stage of the pregnancy to see easy-to-follow information and visual guides to the baby’s progress.

"We wanted to develop something that was easily accessible to parents who were interested in what was going on inside the womb," saidMichael Grant, co-founder and director of the Science Picture Factory, who worked closely with NMH.

According to Dr Catherine Allen, a consultant obstetrician/ gynaecologist at the hospital, "They were very keen to ensure that any information the patient was reading was accurate and could be a reference, so they asked me to help with the terminology."

She and two junior doctors, Jennifer Walsh and Mark Hehir, worked through the information , including the diagrams. Dr Allen is very enthusiastic about the concept of the app. "I got very excited when I saw the 3D pics of embryology," she said . "It is very difficult to teach the subject in 2D diagrams."

Empowering
Dr Allen said the app was "empowering patients with information about their pregnancy. It's lovely to be able to show patients and explain what's going on."

She said she uses the app as an educational aid and recommends it to all her students.

Mr Grant said his firm decided to develop it when one of its directors' wives became pregnant for the first time.

He said that aside from the education and information aspects, it was also developed to help people feel more connected to the pregnancy by knowing and understanding what was happening at the various stages.

As well as developing apps, the Science Picture Factory creates and licenses 3D animated images using the computer-generated imagery tools. It targets the medical and science markets.

The Life in the Womb app is available from the app store and is priced at €4.49. More details are available at LifeintheWombApp.com.

The winners of the Webby awards will be announced next Tuesday, April 29th, and the awards ceremony takes place on May 19th in New York.