For the youngest and tiniest patients in hospitals across the world, the first few weeks and months of life on Earth can be a stressful experience.
Kept inside incubators, premature babies are delicate and susceptible to infection. They are also separated from their mothers. Physical interaction between mother and baby during this time is very limited. Mothers too can feel frustrated by this too, or even suffer postpartum depression due to the fact they are not able to physically care for and comfort their babies.
BabyBe, a company from Chile aims to help change this. It wants to shorten hospital stays for premature babies and make women feel actively like mothers from the moment their babies are born. To do this it has created a system that measures the movement of the mother's lungs and heartbeat and transforms it into a sensory experience for the baby, reducing the stress they feel and aiding their development and early memories. "It gives premature babies the ability to feel their mothers touch from within an incubation machine," says Raphael PM Lang from BabyBe.
With BabyBe, a gel mattress in installed inside the incubator that has been designed to "replicate the density of the human body and the texture of the skin". Inside it are pulse points reflecting the layout of the lungs and heart in the chest. The mother is given a plastic turtle, also with gel panels, to rest on her upper chest -- exactly the place she might rest a tiny baby.
The turtle contains sensors to pick up the unique beat of the mother's heart and the motion of her lungs. These patterns are wirelessly transmitted to a machine outside of the incubator, which is attached to the mattress with wires. The machine feeds through the patterns in real time so the baby will get to know its mother's heartbeat and feel her lungs inflate and deflate.
The BabyBe system can also transmit bodily warmth and the sound of the mother's voice through into the mattress, again strengthening the bond between mother and baby. Because babies start to form their first memories in the third trimester of pregnancy, those early memories are usually formed within the womb.
For very premature babies, however, they may miss those early opportunities to create memories and bond with their mothers physically.
According to trials BabyBe is currently conducting in Chile, babies who have this kind of stimulation the mattress provides are not only calmer and less stressed, but are also likely to develop more quickly and leave the incubator sooner. "Physical contact can help the baby to go through the process in half of the time," the team claims. The quicker they can get out of the incubator, the better it is for the hospital and the baby. The other benefit, points out Lang, is that "mothers become active caretakers of their babies -- not just spectators". "We want to give them the chance to be with their babies in real time all the times."
The average time premature babies spend in incubators is 21 days. The BabyBe team hopes to be able to dramatically reduce this, and in the process reduce the cost of treating a premature baby -- an exercise that costs tens of thousands of pounds on average.
Critical to controlling costs in hospitals is reducing the length of hospital stays.
The BabyBe system was one of the finalists of Intel's Make It Wearable competition, and despite not winning, the team has already formed links with several large health authorities and hospitals in South America and Europe that mean once it has gone through further trials and got approval from regulatory authorities, it should become a reality for premature babies and their mothers. The company already has orders from Germany, from an organisation that transfers premature or poorly babies from one hospital to another.
WIRED.co.uk attended the final of the competition in San Francisco and took a closer look at BabyBe. The mattress itself is incredibly soft and smooth despite having that slightly imperfect quality of adult human skin. When prodded, it is squishy to the touch, similar to the kind of gel bubbles used to create wrist rests on mouse mats and for computer keyboards. The top skin layer has a slight elastic, movable quality to it that mimics the way human skin sits on top of flesh. When the lungs embedded in the mattress move, they inflate and deflate naturally, whereas the heart has a more percussive quality. Press your ear to it and you can hear it too.
The turtle itself is cute, as well as being a comfortable shape to hold. It sits quite naturally on the chest, although we found it a little heavy -- definitely heavier than a tiny baby. It also currently requires the person holding it to be in a very specific position for it to work. When it is picking up the right signals from the body it glows blue gently, which is reassuring to the holder.
An impressive amount of thought and care has gone into designing BabyBe. It is aesthetically pleasing, as well providing a clever sensory experience. It's also a well-conceived idea -- one that brings comfort and reassurance to mothers and premature babies alike. If it does indeed shorten the time babies need to spend in incubators as a result, it will be good for hospitals too, and once the money-saving potential of the technology has been proven, it would be surprising not to see BabyBe in hospital incubators across the world.