Neonatal Feeding App

Walking Doctors

Neonatal Feeding App

An App that supports, tracks and measures the growth of sick and premature neonates in hospitalized infants

Dakar, Senegal

Senegal

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

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Malnutrition in financially poor counties is responsible for for 50% of all cause mortality. For neonates it’s no different but this is not recognized as a primary cause of neonatal mortality, globally. Instead, focus on neonatal resuscitation, treatment of sepsis and oxygen delivery systems, has taken neonatal survival to its limits: Neonatal survival rates have not moved much over tens years. One reason neonatal nutrition has not come into focus is because of complicated calculations re: nutritional requirements and dearth of commodities like powder formula and parenteral nutrition in particular -- nutrition delivered through the veins.

Sick neonates cannot get better if they are starving. But in most countries in the word, a sick baby is held "npo" and only salt and sugar water administered through the veins for lack of understanding and technology of how to feed a baby that will not suck. The gap is easily addressed by imitating neonatal care of financially rich countries like the United States. Here. every sick baby is given a set volume of breast milk or formula as a function of age and weight. If the baby's condition is such that it cannot tolerate gastrointestinal feeding, parenteral nutrition or intravenous carbohydrate, lipid, mineral and protein mixtures is administered. This proposal addresses a vital neonatal nutrition care gap by applying available technology to calculate, cord and monitor a baby’s milk and PN requirements when needed. This technology is incorporated into Walking Doctors' electronic health record that has been used for eight years throughout the world and tested last summer at the proposed hospital site, Diamniadio Children's Hospital. The proposal also works with the pharmaceutical company Baxter to import and extant single mixture of PN that is appropriate for 80% of neonates regardless of gestational age and condition.

Neonatal mortality rate (NMR) is staggeringly high in Senegal with little improvement over a decade, along wiith the rest of the world. NMR in Senegal is 30. In the U.S., it’s 3. Stubborn neonatal survival in Senegal is due to limited feeding technology for sick and premature babies. WHO quotes 45% of all childhood mortality due to malnutrition. Yet standardized feeding methods in Senegalese hospitals are extremely rare. Life-saving parenteral nutrition (PN) does not exist. We research the impact a U.S.-standard rapid oral milk advancement and PN protocol for neonates at Diamniadio Children’s Hospital in Senegal supported, recorded and measured by an Electronic Health Record with embedded neonatal nutrition App built specifically for the problem and setting.