Device to Detect a Heartbeat in an Unresponsive Newborn Infant
Why This Project Is Important
Oftentimes, in non-centralized regions of third world countries, the people present at the birth of a child have neither the training nor the equipment necessary to determine whether a non-responsive infant is living or stillborn. This results in many unnecessary infant deaths where an unresponsive newborn is mistakenly considered stillborn.
Project Description
Students in the International Business Ventures (IBV) Enterprise at Michigan Technological University are working together to develop an infant heart monitor. The infant heart annunciator is a small device, about one inch by three incnes in size, that is designed to be placed on an infant's chest and, within three seconds, will read an infant's electrocardiogram and produce a visible flast and an audible beep every time a heart beat is detected. This device is unlike any other that is currently in the market, comparable only to a standard heart monitor. Unlike the standard heart monitor, this device is considerably less expensive, with anticipated cost ranging between $20 and $30. It is also much simpler than a cardiac monitor, providing only the information necessary to determine whether or not a heartbeat is present and an indication of its rate.
We are raising donations to be able to complete the design of our product through the construction of prototypes and clinical testing, to ship a prototype of our design to Ghana to receive feedback from those who would be using our product when it is complete, and to eventually create this device on a large scale.
We will complete this project by testing the effectiveness, stability, and reproducibility of our circuit, by testing the ability of our packaging to conform to the infant's chest and to be strong enough to withstand the conditions it will be in, and by testing the electrical characteristics of the electrodes we will be using in the device.
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What Your Donation Can Help Us Do:
- Fund a project to save infant lives.
- Fund the completion of our design by allowing us to purchase components and raw materials needed to prototype and test our design.
- Fund the field testing of our design by providing us money to travel to Ghana. This also allows us to gather feedback from the end user of our product.
- Fund the manufacture of our device once the design is complete so that it may be donated to those who need it.
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