NeMo: Empowering Mothers to Identify Neonatal Illness

Soumyadipta Acharya of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will develop a technology they call NeMo (neonatal monitoring), for families in low-resource settings to monitor their newborns at home to help them identify potentially severe illnesses. Infant mortality rates are highest during the first week of life, and in developing countries are largely caused by treatable diseases such as pneumonia or sepsis. To help families detect these conditions they are developing a device that comprises a low-cost, paper sensor that can be placed on the infant's abdomen to measure respiratory rate and temperature, and a smartphone application that uses audio and visual cues to enable a family member to clinically assess the infant. The measurements and assessments together are then used to alert the family to dangerous conditions and connect them with a health worker. They will develop training methods and perform a pilot test of their device in Uganda to analyze usability.