Active Birth Pools designs and manufactures award-winning water birth pools for hospitals, birth centres and maternity units. Our pools have been recognised by the Building Better Healthcare Awards, the European Product Design Award and the Design MasterPrize for their combination of ergonomic design, advanced material technology, safety-led features and long-term performance.
These awards are important because a hospital water birth pool is not simply a bath. It is a specialist piece of maternity sanitary ware designed for demanding clinical environments. It must support mothers during labour and birth, provide midwives with safe and comfortable access, help maternity teams manage risk and withstand years of intensive hospital use.
At Active Birth Pools, every design decision is shaped by these practical requirements.
Recognition from the Building Better Healthcare Awards
The Active Birth Pool was Highly Commended at the Building Better Healthcare Awards in the category for Best Internal Building Product.
This recognition highlights one of the central strengths of Active Birth Pools: our products are designed specifically for healthcare environments. A water birth pool must work as part of a maternity room. It must support safe entry and exit, allow mothers to move freely, enable midwives to work close to the mother and provide a smooth, durable, easy-to-clean surface.
The Building Better Healthcare Awards judges described the Active Birth Pool as an “incomparable combination of intelligent design, superior materials and state-of-the-art manufacturing”.
That description reflects the way Active Birth Pools approaches product design. Our pools are not adapted domestic baths. They are purpose-designed hospital water birth pools, developed around the realities of labour, birth, infection control, water safety, midwifery care and long-term use. 
European Product Design Award Winner
The Active II/360 Water Birth Pool was recognised by the European Product Design Award as a winner in Industrial / Healthcare: Safety Designs.
This award is especially relevant because it recognises product design as a serious discipline. In a maternity setting, good design is not decorative. It affects safety, movement, posture, access, cleaning, maintenance and the overall experience of labour and birth.
The Active II/360 Water Birth Pool was designed to support mothers, midwives and maternity-unit planners. Its keyhole shape, broad bull-nosed rim, integrated handgrips, labour support seat, rim-level safety seat and optional Water Column all have a practical purpose.
For mothers, the pool provides space, support and freedom of movement. For midwives, it improves access and helps reduce awkward working positions. For estates and procurement teams, it offers a robust, long-lasting solution designed for repeated professional use.
Design MasterPrize Recognition
The Active II/360 Water Birth Pool with Bespoke Water Column has also been recognised by the Design MasterPrize in the Healthcare: Other Designs category.
The Active 360 configuration allows the pool to be installed away from the wall while keeping plumbing, controls and fittings off the rim. This creates 360-degree access around the pool, giving midwives, birth partners and maternity teams greater flexibility during labour and birth.
The Bespoke Water Column is a key part of this design. It contains the plumbing system separately from the pool rim, helping to keep the rim clear for mothers, midwives and birth partners. This improves usability and helps avoid unnecessary obstructions around the pool.
The result is a highly functional hospital water birth pool system that combines freedom of access with practical water-management design.
Why Award-Winning Design Matters in Maternity Units
Awards matter when they recognise features that make a real difference in daily use.
In a maternity unit, a water birth pool must perform reliably every day. It must be comfortable for mothers, practical for midwives and durable for hospitals. It must be easy to clean, resistant to damage and suitable for repeated use in a professional healthcare environment.
Active Birth Pools are designed around these needs.
The extra-wide rim gives mothers a secure surface to lean on, rest against or use for support. It also gives midwives and birth partners a stable edge from which to assist. Integrated handgrips provide additional support without adding awkward projections or unnecessary fittings.
The rim-level safety seat supports monitoring, assessment and emergency evacuation when required. The labour support seat helps mothers adopt supported upright, kneeling and resting positions during labour.
The sculpted concave skirting allows midwives to work closer to the mother, with space for their legs beneath the pool. This helps improve posture, comfort and access during care.
These details are not cosmetic. They are the features that make a water birth pool safer, more practical and more effective in a real maternity room.
Active Birth Pools are made from Ficore®, a proprietary composite material developed for professional water birth pool manufacture.
Ficore® allows each pool to be produced as a strong, rigid, seamless one-piece form. This makes it possible to integrate ergonomic features directly into the pool, including the wide rim, handgrips, seating and sculpted internal shape.
Material choice is one of the most important factors in water birth pool performance. Ficore® has a greater adhesive factor than fibreglass or acrylic. Its surface is less slippery than fibreglass or acrylic and more slip resistant than those materials, without being described as slip-proof.
This comparative surface performance is valuable in a wet maternity environment, where mothers need to feel secure as they move, kneel, lean, turn and rise during labour.
Ficore® is also warm and tactile to the touch, highly durable, resistant to chemicals and thermal shock, and suitable for demanding hospital use. These qualities support comfort, hygiene, cleaning confidence and long-term value.
Designed for Mothers, Midwives and Hospitals
The best hospital water birth pools must meet the needs of several groups at once.
Mothers need a pool that feels safe, spacious, warm and supportive. They need freedom to move instinctively and choose comfortable positions during labour.
Midwives need close access, clear visibility, practical working positions and features that help them support the mother safely.
Hospitals need a pool that is durable, cleanable, repairable and cost-effective over its working life.
Active Birth Pools brings these requirements together in one award-winning range of professional water birth pools.
Purpose-Designed Hospital Water Birth Pools
The awards received by Active Birth Pools confirm what has guided our work since 1987: a water birth pool must be designed specifically for maternity care.
The Building Better Healthcare Awards recognised the importance of intelligent healthcare product design. The European Product Design Award recognised the Active II/360 as a safety-led healthcare design. The Design MasterPrize recognised the Active II/360 with Bespoke Water Column as an innovative solution for modern maternity facilities.
Together, these awards demonstrate that Active Birth Pools are not ordinary baths. They are purpose-designed hospital water birth pools created around safety, comfort, access, hygiene, durability and long-term performance.
For maternity units planning new birth rooms, refurbishing existing facilities or upgrading older water birth pools, award-winning design is more than a mark of recognition. It is evidence of a product that has been carefully developed to support mothers, midwives and hospitals in the moments when design matters most.
