The Baby CD
Barrington resident and business owner Tim Kelley and his wife, Maureen, experienced the same anticipation and excitement about having children that most new parents do. Having information on everything from early pregnancy to questions about their baby, and everything in between, was a priority.
Yet, unlike when his wife was pregnant in the 1990s and inches thick resource books were a baby shower staple, Kelley said parents in 2010 now “expect electronic media” when they are expecting. After eight years of development and four years of marketing his company’s The Baby CD© –a revolutionary, new parent’s digital information source – has reached more than 50 percent of new moms and dads in the United States, and is now beginning to reach new parents around the globe.
Tim Kelley reaches into a cabinet, unearths a relic, and plops it down on HIS office conference room table with a thud.
“That’s 17 pounds,” he says of the paper bag and its contents. Marked with the logo of Central DuPage Hospital, the bag is filled with a landfill of paper – mostly pamphlets with utilitarian titles like “Breastfeeding,” “Preterm Labor,” and “Abnormal Uterine Bleeding.” This haphazard collection of pamphlets stashed in a tote bag was typical of what new parents received as they headed home with their newborn, and all their new parental worries.
Kelley, a soft-spoken 1985 Barrington High School alumnus, explains that “this was all the stuff that moms were getting… The iPod generation digging through this? Not a chance." And here, adds Kelley, is where The Baby CD comes in – the digital age’s answer to the new parent tome of the past.
The Baby CD takes libraries of information on pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood, organizes the information, and burns them onto a single disc. The CD includes “Health and Safety” (with such chapters as “Skin Issues” and “Sickle Cell Screening”) and “Giving Birth” (with information that ranges from Caesarian sections to water births) and “Family” (including “Dad’s Corner” and “Preparing Pets”).
Under “Your Pregnancy,” parents can scroll through tabs devoted to each of the trimesters, and visit chapters like “When Baby is not on Schedule,” “Choosing Your Baby’s Doctor” and “Moms Over 35.”
Jen Gomez of Island Lake, Ill., recalled getting three different baby information packets – from her obstetrician, her hospital and her pediatrician –when pregnant with son Mason, now 18 months. Set to welcome their second child in October, Gomez and her husband, Steve, say they use The Baby CD. Two of their favorite applications are a due-date calculator and a growth chart.
"My husband is so much more (tech savvy) than I am,” Gomez said. “As long as it's easy for me to navigate through, I can do it. It was a daily or weekly thing (to use) because of the growth chart and the information on the development each week. There are different milestones throughout your pregnancy, so each day it's beneficial to check it,” she said.
Both in their 30s, the Gomezes say they don’t feel they qualify for the aforementioned “iPod generation.” Yet, Jen said friends who went through pregnancy in their 20s gave her the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” new parent book, and she described it as feeling like “a hand-me-down. It did come in handy, but it wasn’t as up-to-date as I wanted.”
An application for new parents
The story of how Kelley and a staff of 10 started producing Baby CDs for thousands of hospitals and practitioners in all 50 states – along with Canada and Mexico – dates back through the last decade. His work in radiology showed him that books were becoming like outdated VCRs were for the child-bearing generation.
"In high school, I was not really into technology except for car stereos and that kind of stuff,” said Kelley, who roamed the halls of Barrington High School with twin sister Kim and older brother Chris. He then headed southwest to attend Arizona State University. During his time in the Valley of the Sun, he gained insight into the evolving medical culture at a suburban Phoenix hospital while working as a phlebotomist – or, as he puts it, "basically, a fancy word for a guy who runs around drawing blood and getting bedpans thrown at you, because you're not the guy the patients want to see.
Returning to the Midwest, he finished college at Northwestern University, and graduated in 1991 with a degree in psychology. Kelley said his first job in the medical tech field was selling ultrasound equipment to veterinarians. “They use them to look at things like kidneys in dogs. And of course,” he said with a smile, “the biggest thing was obstructions in pets, to see what they swallowed.”
His experience with ultrasound equipment led directly to a job with the electronics manufacturer, TDK Corporation, where he sharpened his insight into how medical imaging was recorded and how parents were coming to embrace the brave new world.
“I’ve probably always been (the) guy in the family who the parents call and say, 'Can you fix this network issue or that.' But really, the background started with radiology,” he said. “I started off in the radiology recording business before anyone was involved in that business at all.”
So when did he realize that expectant parents would embrace a digital resource? Kelley said “it was more of an evolutionary thing. As we were doing the radiology stuff, hospitals wanted us to put more and more stuff on their CDs, like information from the American Cancer Society ... CDs were being used in cardiology but not yet in radiology, so we really made a push to bring CDs into radiology instead of using film – and of course, at first they just laughed at us. A couple of years later, administrators looking for savings in costs were telling doctors, 'You're gonna have to start using CDs instead of film.'”
After taking his first stab at a Baby CD in 2002, Kelley and his business partner, Steve Austin, lined up content partners and sponsors. They launched the company out of a friend’s office in 2006. Working with information provided by titles at Harvard Press – including “The Joy of Pregnancy” and “The Working Mother’s Companion” – the CD’s first customer was the Women’s Center for Health in Naperville, Ill., and Kelley recalled how he signed up 100 obstetrics practices in one weekend at a trade show that would now offer the CD to their patients.
Today, Kelley said 8,000 clients have been inked to receive a general version of the CD, and 1,000 have opted for a customized version that can include everything from basic physician contact information to website links.
Local doctor offers CD
Dr. Dan Pesavento, who has operated out of Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington since 1988, hands out custom CDs to his expectant moms. Pesavanto estimates he has delivered around 4,500 babies over the last two decades – acknowledged that he is feeling his way through the modern demands of the digital age, but added that he likes what he’s seen so far with Kelley’s product.
"We have the customized version. Right now we just added the practice information – the hours, telephone numbers,” Pesavento said. “There didn't really need to be a lot of customization of the other information because it was all pretty well done ... It's very well organized and easy to manage. It goes into a great amount of depth without being overwhelming.”
Pesavento’s own children were born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when pregnancy books were taking hold. “We didn't have the Internet yet,” he said, adding with a chuckle that “my wife also had me as a resource.”
But Pesavento added that “sometimes (a pregnancy book) goes into all sorts of problems that occur during pregnancy, which is good, but a lot of times they go into such depth with the problems they bring about a lot of anxiety, and we'd have to spend a lot of time reassuring patients that they were doing fine in their pregnancies.”
Kelley echoed Pesavento’s observation, saying one goal of the Baby CD is to provide reassurance for parents who might not get it from a book with a yellowing publication date. Kelley doesn’t appear to be a fan of the “What to Expect” titles, saying the CD is “considered the anti-'What to Expect,' (because) doctors approve of it, and it’s not based on opinions. You can't have opinions about developmental issues, (and) certain timelines can't be rigid at all, because they scare people.”
"When we were developing this,” Kelley added, “the thought process was, (can) you create an aggregate calming effect? People will read the 'What to Expect' books, and they'll panic, because something doesn't happen at a certain time ... Even a provider can have a slightly different opinion, so they can go through our content and say, 'Well, I believe this happens at 12 weeks instead of 10 weeks for most of my patients,' and they can edit it."
Pesavento – who helms an office founded in the 20th century and moving deeper into the 21st – said he doesn’t want to see anything replace what he called “the personal flavor of a practice” as the cyber world rolls relentlessly forward. “Technology has given patients more and quicker access. Whether that's good or not, I don't know,” he said. “I think that there's going to be a lot more access to doctors (in the future) versus using the Internet. I certainly like to have contact with them personally - you know, the people in my office, my patients.
“Things are moving more towards being computer-friendly, with electronic medical records, electronic scheduling, and it may make it more convenient for the patients. The thing that we're concerned about is that it's just going to break down (the) doctor and patient relationship. I hope it doesn’t.”
Kelley, whose children are now aged 17 and 10, stressed that he believes no outside resource should elbow a physician aside, saying a doctor “is the ultimate resource” for parents. “The Internet, I think, since (the 1990s), has become a scary place,” Kelley said. There's great information, but at the same time, doctors tell me stories where they lose a patient because they went out and bought a do-it-yourself home birthing kit,” Kelley added, noting that the Baby CD contains “content that (doctors have) approved of and they’re giving to their patients.”
Eventually, Kelley hopes to see the Baby CD and its future iterations expand worldwide – in fact, he said a Spanish-language version, with cultural adaptations provided by a consultant out of Chile, is ready for distribution this summer.
"We'd love to educate every mom in the U.S. if possible, and also have enough revenue to support programs in under-developed areas as well,” he said. “We look at this (CD) as the first touchpoint… Ten years from now, I hope to see this become the go-to reference site for people, like the Encyclopedia Britannica was when we were kids.”