Hello Phototherapy

Abstract: This project aims to design a wearable phototherapy for neonatal jaundice medical care. Beginning with ergonomics research, the design also focus on mechanical structure and material to enhance medical efficiency, to achieve affordable cost, and to provide users with easy operation and safe characteristics. It will enable parents to give jaundice babies phototherapy at home and release tense hospital resources. Jaundice is the most common condition that requires medical attention in newborns. It is caused by the accumulation of unconjugated bilirubin in the blood and requires proper medical care to avoid kernicterus or even death. Around 8% of infants in the world need phototherapy treatment for unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia. Conventional phototherapy and optical fiber pad are two main types of phototherapy for neonatal jaundice. Conventional one is efficient to cure jaundice. However, it is very inconvenient, causing discomfort and requiring expansive stays at hospital. Current optical-fiber pad phototherapy om the market can be used at home, but it has lower efficiency which can only care for jaundice babies with mild symptoms. In any case, traditional phototherapy has lots of space for improvement: Infants still suffer from improper temperature, annoying eyeshade, and loneliness when lying on an uncomfortable mattress, etc. Particularly, it requires jaundice babies and their caretakers to stay at the hospital, which increases the pressure on limited medical resources. Different from the above phototherapy products, we have rethinked the design of wearable phototherapy, and tried to form an efficient, humanized and cost-saving product with the great potential in the market. During the design process, we also combined sensor technology and material engineering, and explored the ways to meet all the essential user requirements. The project has successfully resulted in a wearable phototherapy bag with low medical cost and high cure rate.