Description of Session
Each year, over 2.9 million newborns die within the first 28 days following birth, with 75% of these deaths occurring in the first 7 days of life. Many of these deaths occur within homes in low-resource settings largely due to preventable causes such as pneumonia and sepsis and could be averted by timely identification and referral to care. Healthcare systems in low-resource settings often rely on community health workers (CHWs) to visit newborns in rural villages in the first week of life to triage them. However, the number of CHWs remains woefully inadequate and thus infants with signs of illness are often identified too late to impact survival. Task shifting neonatal assessment and recognition of danger signs from CHWs to mothers is a promising strategy to improve early identification of neonatal illness. The NeMo System, comprised of a smartphone application and low-cost wearable sensor, empowers mothers to screen their newborns based on the seven clinical signs indicative of severe neonatal illness as established by the World Health Organization’s Integrated Management of Neonatal Childhood Illness guidelines. Through three rounds of formative usability studies in eastern Uganda, the NeMo System has been iteratively designed with the end user in mind. Verification of the wearable sensor has been conducted through a clinical study in the Johns Hopkins Nursery. Through a feasibility and acceptability study, mothers were found to be willing to regularly use the NeMo System on their newborns and initiate care-seeking behavior based on the triage information provided. Thus, NeMo is a promising digital health intervention that could enable mothers to conduct a precise, robust assessment of neonatal danger signs in regions where technologies and expertise to do so are scarce.
