Posted By Erin on July 6, 2009

July 6, 2009: West Marin, California

I absolutely love the idea of Embrace: a cost-effective incubator designed to save premature and low birth weight babies in developing countries.

An estimated 20 million low-birth-weight (LBW) and premature babies are born in developing countries each year. 450 of these babies die each hour. Yet many of these babies could survive if they had access to a stable thermal environment like an incubator. Traditional incubators, however, cost up to $20,000 – making them prohibitive in developing countries.

Embrace is an incubator designed to work in a rural healthcare center or at home. It uses no electricity, has no moving parts, is portable, and is safe to use. It uses an innovative phase-change material (PCM) in a sleeping bag design to regulate a baby’s temperature at 37C, critical for the infant’s survival. 

The device works for over 4 hours without intervention, is easy to sterilize (and therefore reusable across babies), and most importantly, facilitates the widely practiced technique of kangaroo mother care, encouraging mother-baby bonding.

Not only does Embrace improve the health of LBW babies who would otherwise die or develop serious medical conditions, but it also puts an end to current unsafe practices of caring for LBW babies, including placing them under light bulbs or tying hot-water bottles to their bodies.

Embrace was invented by a team of business, engineering, and public policy graduate students as part of an Entrepreneurial Design For Extreme Affordability class at Stanford University. The students are being advised by professionals in neonatal care, public health policy, health care in the developing world, business, and product design.

Embrace is trying to raise $1 million over the next 4 years to take this product worldwide. It is a 501c3 registered non-profit organization and all donations are tax-deductable.

Help save babies in the developing world.  Contribute today – I did!

Categories: Go Nonprofits Go