Design of Kangaroo Mother Care Device with Integrated Vitals Monitoring Systems as Alternative to Incubators

Abstract

Prematurity kills more than 8000 babies annually in Ghana since the organs of these babies are often underdeveloped which renders them vulnerable to various infections. In order to save the lives of these babies, they are often placed in incubators. In situations where incubators are not available, a kangaroo mother care (KMC) approach is employed. The traditional KMC lacks means of monitoring vitals such as the temperature, SPO2 level, heart rate and blood pressure of these preterm babies. The practice of the KMC might also pose some inconvenience to the mother since part of the body is exposed. In this project, we integrated the traditional KMC with electronic vitals monitoring system and also addressed the problem of inconvenience of part of the body exposure of the parent practicing KMC. The engineering design process was followed and a functional mockup was constructed. The mockup was tested by comparing the results generated to the results of an existing calibrated devices and the error margins were calculated as 0.62, 0.52, 0.41 and 0.34 for blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), temperature and SPO2, respectively. This device could be an alternative option to baby incubators.