Neonatal Jaundice Phototherapy - Part 1.a: Introduction

Title: Neonatal Jaundice Phototherapy

By: sunnyiut

Design Challenge: Bluetooth Unleashed

Blog number: 01

In my very first blog post in the Bluetooth Unleashed Design Challenge, I'll give an introduction of my project .

This is basically a slightly modified version of my project proposal/application.

Introduction:

In this design challenge my goal is to design a low cost Phototherapy device that can be used to treat neonatal jaundice. It will be an interactive device that will monitor basic health parameters of the baby during treatment period and notify in case of abnormalities. Bluetooth communication will be used to collect health parameters and to send notifications.

This project includes three modules -

     1. Phototherapy unit [Blue LED light source with driver circuitry]

     2. Interfacing and control unit to control the LED light intensity

     3. Wearable health monitor which will collect and send health parameters to the control unit

the 'wearable health monitor' will be mounted on the baby's body and the communication with the control unit will be BLUETOOTH.

Hero board:

Texas Instruments - CC2640R2 LaunchPad

Neonatal Jaundice -
"Jaundice is a common, temporary. and usually harmless condition in newborn infants. It affects both full-term and premature babies, usually appearing during the first week of the baby's life.

Jaundice occurs when there is a build-up of a naturally occurring substance in the blood called bilirubin . Bilirubin is an orange/red pigment in the blood. Bilirubin is produced by the normal breakdown of red blood cells. It is normal for everyone to have low levels of bilirubin in their blood. As bilirubin begins to build up, it deposits on the fatty tissue under the skin causing the baby's skin and whites of the baby's eyes to appear yellow. "

ref--> Your Baby, Jaundice, and Phototherapy

Phototherapy by LEDs-

Some “normal” jaundice will disappear within a week or two without treatment. Other babies will require treatment because of the severity of the jaundice, the cause of the jaundice, or how old the baby is when jaundice appears.

Phototherapy (light treatment - blue light) is the process of using light to eliminate bilirubin in the blood. Your baby's skin and blood absorb these light waves. These light waves are absorbed by your baby's skin and blood and change bilirubin into products, which can pass through their system.

Phototherapy treatments decrease the bilirubin levels in the blood by changing the trans-bilirubin into cis-bilirubin isomer, which is water-soluble.

Super bright LEDs with ~460nm blue color of the light spectrum wavelength have an abrupt attenuation of the irradiance from the infra-red and ultra-violet wavelength ranges, reducing undesired effects to the infant's skin.

Side effects -

Generally it's safe and considered to have short term side effects like -

•      interference with maternal-infant interaction,
•      imbalance of thermal environment,
•      sudden water loss,
•      electrolyte disturbance etc

My experience -

I have a baby girl of four months old. After one week of her birth, she developed jaundice and it became severe. So, she had to go under phototherapy treatment.

She was responding actively during the treatment sessions [15 mins feeding break after every 45 mins of treatment]. like crying and moving repeatedly with unrest to show her discomfort, which was a normal behavior. But after several intensive sessions her body temperature gradually dropped at night and she stopped responding. This in-activeness was due to dehydration.

Unfortunately we could not noticed it in time, as the cradle was covered with thick cloth so that the light does not come out of the treatment area. As soon as they found her losing response, they paused it and advised for excessive breastfeeding until she regain her natural responses.

My observation regarding this issue is that -

during the 45 minutes of treatment session, a continuous monitoring system of the baby's physical condition can reduce this kind of inconvenience. Monitoring basic health parameters like temperature, heart rate, hydration etc. will be good enough to predict the physical condition of the baby. And based on that, intensity of the treatment can be optimized automatically to keep the baby out of undesired side effects.

This experience led me to design a device with these features.

Objectives -

• monitor the basic health parameters of the baby
  • Heart rate
  • Body temperature
  • Hydration from skin impedance measurement [optional - if I get enough time for that]
• monitor the ambient environment of the treatment area
  • ambient temperature
  • humidity
  • light intensity
• flexible control of the intensity of the treatment [controlling the brightness of the LEDs]
• display live updates of different parameters and notify if needed

Design Challenge Participation -

I was working on choosing the LED and designing the driver circuit when this design challenge took place in the community.

In this project, the basic health parameter monitoring module has to be small wearable, portable and should have communication capability to send the data to the control unit.

As the baby moves a lot, it's not a safe idea to go for wired communication. Therefore, I choose Bluetooth communication for interfacing. This gave me an opportunity to participate in this design challenge.

In my next blog post, I'll be describing my Project Plan in detail.