The Technology of Care: How Irth Turns Our Stories Into Safety

Technology didn’t start in Silicon Valley. It started with hands.

Hands that knew how to make something out of what was available. Hands that held knowledge without calling it knowledge. Hands that stitched, stirred, braided, measured, built, and repaired. In our communities, “technology” has often looked like craft—quiet, practical, and lifesaving.

That’s why I think textiles are one of the clearest examples of what technology really is. Cloth is design. It’s structure. It’s layers working together for a purpose. A quilt isn’t just pretty. It’s protection you can feel. It’s made to be used, washed, passed down, and used when needed. 

Irth was built in that same spirit.

IrthⓇ—as in Birth, without the “B” for bias—is the-first-of-its-kind non-profit digital platform where Black and brown birthing people can find and leave reviews across the full journey: prenatal care, the birth experience, postpartum, and pediatrics. It’s a community signal, structured into a tool you can use before you ever walk into a waiting room, all while driving more accountability and transparency in our care.  Because the information most people rely on—rankings, reputation, generic reviews—rarely answers the questions our bodies are carrying: Will they listen to ME? Will they believe MY pain? Will they rush me? Will I be safe here?

I had these same questions over twenty years ago, as I prepared to welcome my first child into the world. So I did the research–I chose a well-reviewed hospital, and I trusted the credentials and the reputation. And still I experienced care that left me feeling dismissed and devalued in ways that made it unmistakably clear: I wasn’t just looking for “good” care on paper, I needed to know what care felt like for someone who was actually like me. Even then so many things that I read in reviews did not happen for me as a Black woman, as someone who was not yet married, or as someone who was in graduate school and therefore on basic insurance. What I didn’t know then and what I do know now is that I needed reviews that carried the truth of our Black & brown bodies and our lived reality, not generic ratings that couldn’t tell me whether I’d be believed, respected, or protected.

This experience never left me and years later, I created Irth —out of what I wished existed when I gave birth, and out of a determination to make sure the next Black or brown parent doesn’t have to walk into that room without a real map to safety. What makes our story richer is that I created Irth with my son, a math and science kid at this core who loved coding. What began as a mommy-son project, when he was about 12 years old–me showing him an application of his skills toward my passion issue–has now grown into a national movement, with over 30,000 users and reviews from 46 states. 

And what we’re building now goes deeper than reviews. We’re building out a model that turns lived experience into structured data—into datasets that can be used to push the system, measure what’s happening, and make it harder for institutions to hide. When enough people tell the truth in one place, you start to see where bias shows up, where communication breaks down, where safety protocols fail, and also where care teams are doing it right. That is how you move from “I felt something was off” to “Here is what’s happening, here is where, and here is what needs to change.” When we share our stories, we can work with hospitals to learn from the living instead of waiting for another tragic and preventable death. 

That’s the logic behind the Birth Without BiasⓇ Quality Improvement Program, our hospital initiative, now in nine hospitals across seven states. This work matters because it connects our community truth to quality improvement in a real way—not as a feel-good listening session, but as an operational commitment to act on what Black and brown patients are saying. Along the way we are building out our “Irth-Approved” doctor and hospital accreditation as our community’s ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ for Black birth. 

And we’re still building. This year we’re launching our provider improvement strategy, because hospitals are buildings where care is administered by people. In exam rooms. In triage. On labor floors. In pediatric visits. If we’re serious about outcomes, we have to be serious about what happens in those moments—and about giving doctors and other healthcare providers the tools, expectations, and accountability to deliver respectful, safe care for Black birthing people.

People have called Irth the digital Green Book for Black birth. I understand that. The Green Book existed because Black travelers needed help finding safety in a world that didn’t guarantee it. Irth is doing that kind of navigation for maternal and infant health—guiding our community toward safer care with real, specific information from people who’ve been there, while also working to change the landscape so safety isn’t something you have to hunt for in the first place.

This March, Irth turns four in the app stores. I’m proud of this milestone. I don’t take that as a victory lap. I take it as a checkpoint. Four years in, I’m even more certain about what this has to be: not just an app, but the first national repository of our patient experiences in maternal and infant care, built with rigor and care, powered by the people and powerful enough to shift decisions and standards.

If you want to celebrate Irth at four with us, here’s what I’ll ask: add your voice. Leave the review you wish you could’ve read. Name what was respectful and what wasn’t. Say what you needed and whether you got it. That’s how we protect each other in real time. That’s how we shift systems—with lived experience data, followed by transparency and accountability. Follow us on @theIrthApp on social media and donate to support our non-profit work if you can. It will take all of our stories. And that’s how we move from surviving the system to changing it.

Kimberly Seals Allers is the founder of IRTH and executive director of Narrative Nation Inc, a NYC-based technology and media nonprofit. A former senior editor at Essence and writer at Fortune magazine, Kimberly is the author of five books including The Big Let Down: How Medicine, Big Business and Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding (St. Martins Press). In 2024, she was named to the Fierce 50 in Healthcare. Kimberly also hosts Birthright, a podcast about joy and healing in Black birth. Learn more at irthapp.com, birthrightpodcast.com and follow her @iamKSealsAllers. 

Guest Post By Kimberly Seals Allers