Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

JosÈ Guilherme Cecatti of Cemicamp in Brazil will develop a small watch-like device to measure the sleep patterns and physical activity of pregnant women to help identify very early signs of serious medical conditions such as gestational diabetes and preterm birth so they can be better treated or prevented. Some chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer are known to be associated with disturbances in sleep and physical activity. They will study whether this is the case also for complications during pregnancy.

Craig Goergen, Kirk Foster and George Wodicka from Purdue University together with David Reuter from Seattle Children's Hospital in the U.S. will develop a wearable sensor that can automatically measure blood pressure and body position, and transmit the results to a medical unit to identify pregnant women at risk of developing preeclampsia in remote, low-resource settings.

Marc Mitchell of D-tree International in the U.S. will develop an application that enables community health workers in Zanzibar to register children for immunizations before they are born, to ensure all children are vaccinated on time. Children are currently registered when they are already around four weeks old and only at health facilities, which excludes a lot of children born at home.

Patricia Connolly of the University of Strathclyde and colleagues in the United Kingdom will develop a low-cost, wearable skin patch that can continuously monitor metabolite levels in newborns without the need for blood sampling, and can alert mothers and health workers to potential problems via mobile phone. Changes in metabolites such as those of hemoglobin and bilirubin are used to assess many aspects of newborn health, but current methods require invasive blood sampling and access to laboratory analysis, which is often unavailable in low-resource settings.

Arun Agarwal of Janitri Innovations Private Ltd in India will test a low-cost, wearable device that monitors fetal heart rate and uterine contractions during labor and automatically alerts health workers when the fetus is deprived of oxygen, which is a major cause of neonatal death in India. Existing methods are expensive and require skilled medical professionals to operate them and analyze the results. This means they are not used during the majority of births in India.

James Njeru of the Field Epidemiology Society of Kenya in Kenya will develop a simple electronic system using basic phone technology that registers the birth and immunizations of all children in Kenya, and can send vaccination reminders. At present, childhood vaccinations are often missed or given late in Kenya, which causes substantial health problems. Electronically recording all births would enable vaccinations to be better tracked and reminders to be sent on time to parents, but has been problematic because internet and computer access is often limited.

Prem Mony of St John's Research Institute in India along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will develop a temperature sensor to be worn by caregivers during kangaroo mother care of infants up to four weeks old combined with a mobile device to transmit data for analysis and real-time feedback. Kangaroo mother care involves continuous skin-to-skin contact with the mother to keep the infant warm, and is particularly valuable for protecting preterm infants. However, how long and how often it is actually used in the home, and thus its value, has been difficult to quantify.

Diana Negoescu of the University of Minnesota in the U.S. will ensure routine vaccinations are given to infants during the first year of life in resource-limited settings by providing free, shared transportation to medical centers, and text message reminders. In low-resource countries, public transportation, if available, is often unreliable and infrequent. However, newborns require regular, on-time vaccinations to prevent a variety of potentially deadly diseases.

Conor Walsh of Harvard University and Elisabeth Salisbury of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the U.S. will develop a low-cost, wearable, monitoring device to improve kangaroo mother care for newborns in remote settings. Kangaroo mother care is an established childcare method that is particularly valuable for preterm infants. It uses clothing to attach the baby to the caregiver, thereby ensuring continuous skin-to-skin contact to provide warmth. However, too much or too little heat can also be dangerous, but there is currently no way to monitor that.

Sidney Sampson of Sydsam Integrated Services Limited in Nigeria will produce a low-cost wristband that can be worn by infants from birth until nine months that uses a flashing light to remind mothers when one of the five standard childhood vaccinations is due. Timely childhood vaccinations are critical for preventing deadly diseases, but many low-resource settings such as northwestern Nigeria have low immunization coverage rates and high dropout rates. They will design a waterproof silicon wristband in different colors and test it for user friendliness and safety.