HALO BassiNest vs. Couplet Care Bassinet: A clinical comparison for postpartum units

Both the HALO BassiNest Hospital Series and the Couplet Care Bassinet offer overbed positioning, a departure from the traditional hospital bassinet and its high, fixed walls.

• Footprint: The Couplet Care Bassinet has a floor footprint comparable to a traditional bassinet and stays adjacent to the bed. The HALO parks under the hospital bed, which is not always possible given bars and cords beneath the bed.
• Control from the bed: A mother can raise, lower, rotate, swivel, and extend the Couplet Care Bassinet from the bed, without a second adult. The HALO's controls generally require a second adult for positioning adjustments.
• Infant access: The Couplet Care Bassinet uses a removable sidewall that lifts out and nests in the tub, with no pressure to maintain. The HALO uses a spring-loaded dropside wall that the mother holds open with downward pressure and a latch.
• Clinical evidence: The Couplet Care Bassinet has been evaluated in a National Institutes of Health-funded randomized controlled trial. There is no clinical research specific to the HALO BassiNest Hospital Series.

Hospital bassinets are part of the quality care infrastructure on every postpartum unit. They sit at the bedside for the full length of stay for healthy mother-infant couplets after childbirth. The bassinet design determines how easily a mother can reach her newborn, influences how often she calls for nursing assistance, and impacts how much time her infant spends outside the postpartum room for non-medical reasons.

Two hospital bassinets come up in nearly every procurement conversation: the HALO BassiNest Hospital Series and the Couplet Care Bassinet. Both offer overbed positioning, which is significantly different from traditional hospital bassinets. Traditional bassinets comprise a single plastic tub with high, fixed walls. The two products take very different design approaches.

This comparison is written for clinical champions, value analysis committee members, and procurement teams evaluating capital equipment for their hospital postpartum units or birthing centers.

What Is the HALO BassiNest Hospital Series?

The HALO BassiNest Hospital Series is a 360-degree swiveling bedside bassinet with clear walls and a lowering sidewall intended to enable bedside access to the infant. The sidewall mechanism is spring-loaded. The tub wall stays open while the mother applies constant downward arm pressure, and a mechanical latch holds it in the upper locked position.

HALO is a consumer brand with a hospital program, and the hospital series bassinet is marketed around safe infant sleep from the first night after childbirth. The company frames the design as a solution for cesarean recovery and to help with positioning for breastfeeding.

There is no clinical research specific to the HALO BassiNest Hospital Series. The HALO BassiNest was distributed by GE Healthcare for several years before ultimately being discontinued.

What Is the Couplet Care Bassinet?

The Couplet Care Bassinet is a hospital bassinet developed through human-centered design research through a spin-out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The bassinet was co-designed with mothers, nurses, clinicians, researchers, and industrial designers across multiple rounds of prototyping. There are significant clinical results from an independently conducted randomized controlled trial funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The Couplet Care Bassinet is registered as durable medical equipment. It is not a consumer product and is not sold outside the hospital setting or birth centers.

The design is intended to support all postpartum mothers, including mothers who have had a cesarean section. After surgical birth, mothers initially recover in bed and their mobility is severely restricted. The early postpartum period is critical to support women in being able to pick up and set down their infants, including for responsive infant feeding and to practice safe infant sleep.

Floor Footprint in Postpartum Rooms

Postpartum rooms are among the most space-constrained rooms in a hospital. Every square foot adjacent to the bed must be as clear as possible for maternal access to the bathroom, the food tray, clinical assessments, a chair or sofa for companions, and often equipment such as an intravenous pole.

Nurses have described the floor footprint of the HALO BassiNest as a workflow constraint in tight rooms. The HALO must have space to pivot the legs and slide underneath the hospital bed. Due to the bars or cords under the hospital bed this necessary maneuver for that device cannot always be accomplished. The floor footprint of the Couplet Care Bassinet is comparable to that of a traditional hospital bassinet, and it provides overbed access while the base is positioned adjacent to the maternal hospital bed. There is no expansion into the surrounding floor space and no barriers to use.

The HALO BassiNest’s requirement to slide under the hospital bed is a functional trade-off that also requires it to have small caster wheels. The small caster diameter makes transport difficult, especially if operating at an elevated pace down a hallway.

Maternal Controls and Accessibility from the Bed

Maternal controls and accessibility from the bed are the most practical differences between the two hospital bassinets.

The HALO BassiNest is mechanically simple, but its controls generally cannot be used by the mother from the bed. Repositioning, raising, and lowering the bassinet typically require a second adult. For women recovering from childbirth, and especially for a mother who has had a cesarean section and has mobility restrictions for an extended period, needing a second adult to access their infants is a risk that undermines patient safety.

The Couplet Care Bassinet is designed for bedside use. From the bed, a mother can raise and lower the bassinet, rotate the tub a full 360 degrees, swivel and extend the tub over her lap for infant access. These adjustments can occur in a single fluid movement and do not require a second adult. The extension arm provides greater reach over the bed for easy access for both family members and health care team providers without expanding the floor footprint. As a novel feature, mothers can access a night light with multiple color and brightness settings at the tub wall and retrieve infant care items from the storage cups.

In the randomized controlled trial at North Carolina Women’s Hospital in Chapel Hill funded by the National Institutes of Health, families randomized to use the Couplet Care Bassinet called for nursing assistance significantly less often during their postnatal stays than families in the control group with the traditional bassinet. Infants were removed from the postnatal unit rooms for non-medical reasons less often when families had the Couplet Care Bassinet.

Infant Access: Two Design Approaches

Both hospital bassinets support infant access over the mother's lap for breastfeeding, skin-to-skin contact, and safe sleep. The mechanics for how each is structured is vastly different.

The HALO BassiNest uses a spring-loaded dropside wall. To open the wall, the mother applies constant downward arm pressure. A mechanical latch must be positioned to lock the wall in place. The approach is typically two-handed and requires ongoing physical effort, creating discomfort for the mother over time.

The Couplet Care Bassinet uses a strong central wall that has access points covered with a removable sidewall. The sidewall can be lifted out anytime the mother wants bedside access to her infant. The sidewall nests within the tub and can easily be returned to cover the access points during transport, when an adult is not present, or otherwise as desired. When the sidewall is in place, security is complete. There is no pressure, no latch to remember, no ongoing physical effort by the mother or anyone else.

Both designs are engineered to enable maternal access with their infants. The Couplet Care Bassinet is designed so that continuous access is available with convenient, easy options. With the Couplet Care Bassinet, the mother is able to care for her infant on her own timing, in response to the cues of her infant, and as she likes.

Clinical Evidence: Research Findings

The HALO BassiNest Hospital Series has no research findings available about the hospital series.

The Couplet Care Bassinet has been independently evaluated in a randomized controlled trial at an academic medical center, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Families randomized to use the Couplet Care Bassinet reported:

• significantly fewer calls for nursing assistance during the postpartum stay;
• significantly less time with the infant outside the postpartum room for non-medical reasons before hospital discharge;
• significantly fewer times in which the infant woke the mother;
• high maternal satisfaction.

The National Institutes of Health study findings are on file. To extend knowledge about the ways the Couplet Care Bassinet shapes health care outcomes, clinical care, and satisfaction, a large randomized controlled trial is in progress at Johns Hopkins. This research is also funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The broader clinical context is reflected in the published research of Couplet Care's Founder and Chief Scientist, Dr. Kristin Tully, whose longstanding program of postpartum research examined infant sleep safety risks and breastfeeding barriers associated with the traditional hospital bassinet (e.g., Tully & Ball, 2012). That work, together with the World Health Organization/ UNICEF Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative recommendation on rooming-in to facilitate successful breastfeeding frames why hospital bassinet design is a priority. Bassinets impact people’s ability to meet their infant feeding goals, practice safe infant sleep, and have positive postpartum experiences.

Both HALO and Couplet Care make design claims. However, only the Couplet Care Bassinet has research findings supporting those claims.

Which Bassinet Is Right for Your Hospital?

Both hospital bassinets are meaningful improvements over the traditional hospital bassinet. The right choice depends on what the unit is trying to solve.

The HALO BassiNest Hospital Series fits hospitals with large spacious rooms or hospitals that do not want to use the device as a mode of infant transportation. It is a well-established product with a known workflow.

The Couplet Care Bassinet fits hospitals prioritizing family-focused care, evidence-based design, and operational efficiency. It fits postpartum units looking for a hospital bassinet that was designed with the mother as a primary user. The Couplet Care Bassinet does not go under the bed, avoiding hazards and constraints associated with the HALO BassiNest. It has been developed with feedback from many stakeholders from the first sketch through multiple device iterations. The positive clinical research findings were not a surprise because the Couplet Care Bassinet was developed as an evidence-based intervention to address real unmet needs.

If you are evaluating hospital bassinets to enhance postpartum services for patient safety, satisfaction, or efficiency, reviewing capital equipment as part of a replacement cycle, a member of a value analysis committee review, or otherwise interested, the Couplet Care team is glad to schedule a demonstration and to provide the procurement documentation your process requires.

Frequently Asked Questions

Our unit has considered the HALO, why should we consider the Couplet Care Bassinet?

Most nursing teams reject the HALO because of its large footprint. Since the Couplet Care Bassinet has similar functionality of improving maternal access, the nursing team assumes it has the same footprint. As it turns out, the Couplet Care Bassinet has a similar size footprint to a traditional bassinet. It is sturdy, yet maneuverable.

Which hospital bassinet allows a mother to control positioning from the bed after childbirth?

The Couplet Care Bassinet allows a mother to adjust the bassinet from bed. A mother can raise, lower, rotate, swivel, and extend the tub from the bed and adjust with ease, without a second adult present. In addition, the mother can control the adjustable lighting on either side of the bassinet to see her infant using white or red light on the desired brightness setting.

Is there clinical research on hospital bassinets?

Yes. The Couplet Care Bassinet was developed after formative research (Tully & Ball, 2012) and then a prototype version was evaluated in a randomized controlled trial at North Carolina Women’s Hospital in Chapel Hill, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Additional NIH-funded research is in progress at Johns Hopkins.

Does the Couplet Care Bassinet support recovery after a cesarean section?

Yes. The Couplet Care Bassinet was designed to support the needs of all postpartum mothers, including mothers after a cesarean section.

Our postpartum rooms are small, would the Couplet Care Bassinet fit?

The Couplet Care Bassinet has a floor footprint comparable to the traditional hospital bassinet.

Where can I find the citations? Please see https://www.coupletcare.com/learn/clinical-evidence