The project, which brings together experts from the University’s Division of Child Health, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and School of Computer Science, is being supported with a $100,000 grant from theBill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Dr Don Sharkey,
Clinical Associate Professor of Neonatal Medicine, said: “This could be
a potentially transformative technology for the developing world where
the majority of women do not benefit from specialist antenatal services
during pregnancy and higher risks of infection and illness means
premature births are commonplace.”
Harnessing technology
Computer scientist Dr Michel Valstar added:
“We are talking about countries where new mothers have little or no
access to medical facilities, yet remarkably smartphone technology is
ubiquitous. Our aim is to harness that technology to transform mobile
phones into medical devices that can easily be used by someone without
medical training.”
The research project was one of around
just 60 successful bids out of 1,700 applications worldwide for funding
from the Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations Grant
programme.
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE)
funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mould
in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges.
In places like rural Africa or India,
women rarely have access to the antenatal ultrasound scans which doctors
use to determine the gestation of the babies of their western
counterparts. Traditional methods of estimating gestation based on
measurements and birth weight are not always reliable.
However,
being able to determine the development of babies — and the potential
consequences of their premature birth — can help village elders and
community leaders to decide whether they might simply need to offer
guidance to the mother on the hygiene and nutritional needs of their
infant or whether it is vital to make a trip to a hospital which can
often be hundreds of miles away.
Comparing developmental characteristics
More
than one million babies worldwide die as a result of prematurity every
year, the majority of whom are born in the developing world. Premature
babies in countries like Africa are often at greater risk of dying as a
result of poor nutrition and infections, as well as a result of serious
diseases including TB and HIV.
The app combines simple measurements with
elements of the Ballard test which is used by experienced healthcare
professionals to estimate gestation and looks at developmental
characteristics including the characteristics of lines developed in the
skin on the foot or the shape of features like the ear.
The new app will use the mobile phone’s
camera to take images of the foot, face and ear of the baby and upload
it to a huge database where it will compare it with pictures of
potentially hundreds of other babies at various known gestational ages
to find a ‘match’.
As part of the 18 month project, computer
scientists will be analysing data from the images of babies in order to
build the app. From spring 2015, a clinical team will be collecting the
baseline comparable data by taking pictures of babies in the maternity
and neonatal units at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
The team also plans to explore the
potential ethnic differences in gestational development between babies
born in different parts of the world — babies born in Africa or China
may have different developmental characteristics compared to their
western counterparts.