Objective To investigate the cognition and demand of postpartum continuous health management between health professionals and patients, and to selecte the basic items of cognitive discrepancy and with high demand, so as to provide a basis for the construction of a continuous health management platform for network informatization.

Methods 220 pregnant women and 83 medical staff from a tertiary maternal and child health care institution in Gansu Province were recruited as study subjects.Questionnaire survey and unstructured interviews were used to investigate the factors associated with both health professionals' and patients' cognition and needs of postpartum continuous health management.

Results The differences between health staffs and patients in terms of cognition of maternal health management time limit were not statistically significant(χ² = 7.35, P = 0.062). But there were significant differences in information access through family experience exchange(χ² = 7.15, P = 0.01), pregnant women's school (χ² = 7.34, P = 0.007) and popular science books(χ² = 10.89, P = 0.001). In terms of the needs of information-based health management, there were significant differences in the contents of maternal mental health care (t = 27.6, P < 0.001), keyword search function(t = 10.6, P = 0.001) and physician-patient communication and interaction function (t = 15.4, P < 0.001).

Conclusion There are some differences in the cognitive needs of postpartum continuous health management between health professionals and patients. Medical staff should change their traditional cognitive concept, meet the individual needs of mothers and infants, and achieve information-based continuous management at the same time.