Brooklyn, NY, Feb. 21, 2025 – Maimonides Medical Center has installed a new and innovative Infant Safety System developed by CertaScan Technologies, allowing the hospital to capture high-resolution newborn footprints that can be used for precise identification and to enhance safety.
The system replaces the older ink-and-paper footprinting method and allows new parents to receive a certificate of their newborn’s footprint during their stay. Upon returning home, they can visit www.firstfootprint.com to enhance and personalize the certificate with colors, different fonts, and borders. Parents can also download a digital copy of their baby’s footprint. These additional benefits for families are provided as a gift from Maimonides, at no cost.
The Newborn Safety System, which uses LiveScan Technology, has been included as a recommendation for hospitals in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) most recent Infant Security Guidelines. HIPAA-compliant, it digitally captures each baby’s footprints, security photo, and mother’s fingerprints, linking them together in the newborn’s electronic medical record and allowing hospitals to identify babies when needed. Much like fingerprints, footprints are a biometric, unique to each baby. Taken just minutes after birth, they can be used for secure identification throughout a lifetime, in situations like an abduction, lost baby, or natural disaster. For nurses and hospital staff, it is a simplified replacement for the time-consuming and messy ink-and-paper method.
CertaScan has been installed in over 150 hospitals and has been used to scan the feet of over 1.2 million newborns to provide parents with a precise identification tool for their babies. As the hospital where more babies are born than anywhere else in Brooklyn, Maimonides is now one of the first hospitals in the borough to provide this innovative service to families and the community it serves.
“At Maimonides, we are committed to continuously enhancing the care and services we provide to our community,” said Scott Chudnoff, MD, Chair of OBGYN Services and Maimonides’ Women’s Health Institute. “The addition of CertaScan’s Infant Safety System reflects our dedication to delivering the highest quality care. This technology strengthens our ability to protect every baby born in our hospital, reinforcing our mission to provide excellence in maternal and newborn care.”
“We’re proud to be the first in Brooklyn to integrate the Infant Safety System technology into each patient’s electronic medical record,” said Dolly Allen, DNP, MSN, C-ELBW, NEA-BC, Vice President of Maternal and Pediatric Services at Maimonides Health. “This provides a new layer of security and peace of mind for Maimonides and the families giving birth here, allowing hospital staff and parents access to the quickest and easiest way to confirm a baby’s identity whenever necessary.”
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Maimonides Health is Brooklyn’s largest healthcare system, serving over 320,000 patients each year through the system’s 3 hospitals, 1,800+ physicians and more than 80 community-based practices and outpatient centers. The system is anchored by Maimonides Medical Center, one of the nation’s largest independent teaching hospitals and home to centers of excellence in numerous specialties and Maimonides Midwood Community Hospital (formerly New York Community Hospital), a 130-bed adult medical-surgical hospital; and Maimonides Children’s Hospital, Brooklyn’s only children’s hospital and only pediatric trauma center.
Maimonides’ clinical programs rank among the best in the country for patient outcomes, including its Heart and Vascular Institute, Neurosciences Institute, Bone and Joint Center, and Cancer Center. Maimonides is an affiliate of Northwell Health and a major clinical training site for SUNY Downstate College of Medicine. For additional information, please visit www.maimo.org and follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.