Always-on Imperceptible Infant Monitoring (AIIM) in Kangaroo Mother Care

Debra E. Weese-Mayer, Roozbeh Ghaffari, John A. Rogers, Matt Glucksberg, Aaron Hamvas, Mark Fisher, Bill Grobman and Casey Rand of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics at the Simpson & Querrey Institute, Northwestern University in the U.S. will develop a skin-like sensor for newborns that improves the value of kangaroo mother care (KMC), which is a method used to maintain skin contact with the mother to keep the baby warm. Kangaroo mother care is particularly useful for premature babies in low-resource settings, but it is difficult to monitor how often it is used once the mothers have gone home. They have developed a wearable, ultrathin sensor adapted to delicate newborn skin by fusing soft, stretchable bioelectronics that can measure multiple physiological parameters such as breathing rate and temperature non-invasively through the skin. The device also emits audio and visual alerts when potentially dangerous values are detected, and can store and transmit data wirelessly for clinical monitoring and analysis. They will adapt the sensor to also detect motion and develop it for use during kangaroo mother care. The device will be tested for usability on a panel of mothers and nurses in a clinic in South Africa, and for accuracy in a U.S. based medical center.