Design and Development of Portable Incubator

Abstract

The care of preterm babies which are born before 37 weeks of gestation are utmost importance. The preterm are also known as high risk infants as the baby is not fully mature to handle the external environment as the lungs are also not fully developed. As per World Health Organization report, every year 15 million babies are born around the globe. The death rate of these babies is much higher in under developed countries like Pakistan. In fact, the most significant conclusion from latest research is about the physical environment of preterm infants is that each infant should have a ‘microenvironment’, which can be individualized to needs of the specific child as per gestational age and health condition. In some extent, the incubator can serve as mother’s womb and also helpful in protecting neonate from infection. In this project, a low cost, efficient and reliable infant incubator is developed and fabricated locally which gives stable levels of temperature and humidity so that the preterm or premature neonate have similar conditions as in the mother’s womb. The humidity and temperature are monitored through very reliable sensors. Microenvironment is achieved inside infant chamber using PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) controllers. The whole system is being continuously monitored using multiple alarms and protections to ensure patient safety. The humidity is generated by using active Mist Ultrasonic transducer which is more efficient and stable than the conventional steam-based system, having faster response to acquire higher value of humidity. The performance of the developed incubator is comparable to any CE marked product which gives encouragement to develop the product locally at much cheaper price and thus can be helpful in enhancing life expectancy of premature neonates especially at rural and remote areas having limited health care facilities.