Newcastle in particular has some of the lowest rates of breastfeeding despite a large number of health benefits for both the mother and child, and in order to promote breastfeeding in public the digital civics research team coordinated with local NHS breastfeeding support groups to design and develop a smartphone app that enables mothers to rate and review the breastfeeding friendliness of local businesses nearby.

Launching in 2013, FeedFinder now has over 9,000 users who have contributed over 3,000 venues and more than 3,200 reviews within the application and continues to grow and support mothers in the UK as well as Europe, USA, Australia, and India. The research team at Open Lab have published a number of papers based upon women’s experiences of using FeedFinder and have observed first-hand the positive impact of FeedFinder on the lives of breastfeeding mothers.

The potential for these forms of technology has been identified by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council who recently awarded the FeedFinder project with a Digital Economy Social Impact award for research that rapidly realises the transformational impact of digital technology on community life, cultural experience, future society and the economy. The team are now working with NHS breastfeeding support workers to utilise the data within FeedFinder to improve existing healthcare provisioning through a data driven approach to understanding breastfeeding practices within the UK.