A Wearable Biomedical Device for Newborns
Background
Every day, around the world, nearly 7000 babies a day die, primarily from preventable causes. Globally, complications from prematurity are a leading cause of newborn death (World Health Organization, 2018). About 15 million babies a year are born either too soon (premature) or too small (low birth weight; small-for-gestational age). Hypothermia (low body temperature) is a frequent, often fatal complication among small babies, especially in low/middle-income settings.
Meanwhile, the State of Indiana (United States), has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the United States (Centers for Disease Control, 2018 ). In 2017, 14.4% of umbilical cord blood samples (n = 2,938) collected from women who delivered within 21 Indiana hospitals tested positive for opiates (Indiana State Department of Health, 2018).
Kangaroo Mother Care (skin-to-skin care; KMC/STS) is an intervention that has been shown to be effective both among premature babies, for preventing hypothermia, and, to soothe distress among babies prenatally exposed to opioids who subsequently suffer withdrawal symptoms after birth (neonatal abstinence syndrome). One hurdle for healthcare providers, in terms of implementation of KMC/STS, is that small, premature, and opioid-exposed babies are often medically unstable, and thus, require frequent or continuous vital signs monitoring. This can be burdensome, disruptive, and stressful, for both the adult caregivers (parents; health workers) and the babies.
We have built and patented a wearable neonatal biomedical device called NeoSMART, to address these, and other challenges that may have contributed to the lack of consistent scale-up of KMC/STS in low/middle-income countries, among premature babies, and in high-income countries, among opioid-exposed infants. We believe that improving access to KMC/STS will, in turn, help to reduce high rates of neonatal illness (morbidity) and death (mortality) across geographies. NeoSMART stands for Neonatal Swaddling, Monitoring, Automated Reporting and Tracking
Innovation
To our knowledge, NeoSMART will be the first biomedical device purpose-built to:
- Automatically capture data regarding premature infants’ temperature, breathing, heart rate, and key metrics related to KMC/STS (e.g., number of continuous hours adult-baby pairs engage in STS contact), and;
- Equip health care providers with the ability to monitor, via mobile devices, infants and KMC/STS dyads under their care, as well as to visualize de-identified, aggregated data (i.e., dashboards), for customized indicators via the mobile Helping Babies Survive powered by (mHBS/DHIS2) app.
Impact on human health
- NeoSMART may have applicability to a wide variety of neonatal populations, including:
- Premature babies in low/middle-income countries where there are shortages of incubators and radiant warmers;
- For sick and small babies who require neonatal transport (both LMIC and high-income settings);
- Among babies suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome
Publications
Watts T, Siddiki F, Savita A, Bucher S. The NeoWarm Biomedical Device: Assessment of feasibility and cultural acceptability, identification of potential barriers and challenges, and stakeholder mapping. Paper presented at: IUPUI Research Day2016; Indianapolis, Indiana.
