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What is The Wonder Project?

a project devoted to building a device capable of recording long-term supplemental oxygen to babies in the NICU

BACKGROUND

In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), oxygen is the most commonly used medicine, and nearly all babies get respiratory support at one point. One major goal when treating babies in the NICU is to limit oxygen exposure to the minimum amount needed, because too much oxygen is toxic to the lungs, eyes, and possibly other organs. Doctors use many different devices to deliver respiratory support, but these devices only store data for 24 hours. There is therefore a need for a device that can continuously record the amount of supplemental oxygen exposure for the amount of time (weeks to months) these infants are receiving respiratory support. Knowing the long-term supplemental oxygen exposure not only has a valuable clinical role in helping providers verify the amount of oxygen delivered matches what is intended, but it will also help researchers and physicians gain a better understanding of cumulative oxygen exposure and how it is linked to different adverse health outcomes such as hyperoxia and retinopathy. If researchers are able to study how variable amounts of oxygen delivered affect a baby’s health, both short-term and long-term, then they can create better guidelines concerning the correct amount of oxygen that should be delivered in order to decrease the likelihood of adverse effects.

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NEED STATEMENT

Although there are devices in the NICU that can record real-time oxygen saturation for preterm infants and store this data for 24 hours, there is no way to measure oxygen delivery over longer periods of time; therefore, there is a need for a device capable of continuously recording long-term oxygen exposure to improve the health outcomes of preterm infants.

PROJECT SCOPE

Oxygen is delivered to infants in several different ways, so a device that is compatible with all oxygen delivery systems is required. The device needs to be battery powered and able to store large amounts of data over long periods of time. It needs to be user friendly and the data needs to be easily transferable to different computer systems. We plan to deliver this project to our client Dr. Vesoulis by the end of April 2020.