Surepulse - a new way to monitor the heart rate of Newborns

"Around 10% of babies need assistance with their breathing at birth -- equivalent to 14M every year globally. Reasons for this include being born too early or something untoward happening during birth such as strangulation by the umbilical cord. Those who receive the necessary aid quickly and efficiently will generally go on to lead normal lives, however those for which this is not the case are at risk of harm including damage to their brain or blindness for example.

Doctors have several ways they can help the baby but need a way of assessing how well their treatment is working. They do this by measuring the heart rate (HR) which becomes much lower than it should be if the baby is having problems. An increase in heart rate means that the treatment is effective.

However, unfortunately there is no good way of measuring the heart rate reliably and conveniently straight after birth. Currently, a stethoscope is the common method, but the baby's heart beat can be weak making the heart's sounds difficult to hear whilst in such a stressful environment it is known that errors in calculating the heart rate commonly occur.

SurePulse was set up to solve this dilemma. The heart rate monitor that we have developed uses a small and safe optical sensor mounted in a soft cap placed on the baby's head. This sensor detects small pulsatile changes in blood supply to the forehead to calculate a heart rate. The SurePulse monitor has been successfully tested at the Nottingham University Hospitals on premature babies as a pre-cursor for selling devices around Europe and USA.

SurePulse aims to become the company known to provide specialised neonatal intensive care and resuscitation monitoring. This proposed Innovate UK project has a highly experienced team of engineers, clinicians, scientists, human factors experts, the parents themselves and general public to ensure a successful outcome which will benefit newborns in the years to come. The gains in terms of societal benefits, personal fulfilment and financial, that include costs of stay in intensive care, life-long support and litigation, make this an extremely cost-effective solution to a well-known problem.

We now aim to engage with a wider NHS audience throughout the United Kingdom, outside of Nottingham University Hospitals, via the funding provided by this Innovate UK award."