Southampton’s Lifelight nets Innovate UK funding for neonatal vital signs monitoring

Lifelight has secured funding from Innovate UK to adapt its vital signs monitoring technology for babies and infants.

The Hampshire firm is developing tech which allows a smartphone or tablet to estimate a patient’s blood pressure, pulse and breathing rate, simply by having them look into the device’s built-in camera for 40 seconds.

Globally, five million neonates (0-28 days old) die every year – 98 per cent of which in developing countries – with infection, prematurity and birth asphyxia as the main causes.

Frequent monitoring of babies’ vital signs can provide early warning of infection or deterioration generally, so life-saving treatment can begin as soon as possible.

However, existing monitoring methods – like checking blood pressure via an arterial line or cuff, or heart rate and respiratory rate via electrodes, adhesive pulse oximeters and stuck-on temperature probes and thermometers – are invasive and contact-based.

They can often cause pain, distress, and disturb sleep, as well as damaging the tissue of babies’ thin skin.

And crucially, they may increase the risk of the very infections they’re being used to detect.

They’re also intensive on clinical resources, with some babies requiring observations every 15 minutes.

With all this in mind, Lifelight has seen growing demand from doctors wishing to pilot its technology in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

Now with the backing of Innovate UK, the team are looking to develop a new solution, Lifelight Baby.

The tech will estimate respiratory rate and oxygen saturation, as well as pulse rate and blood pressure, and detect fever in infants.

Laurence Pearce, founder and CEO of Lifelight, said: “This project is born out of the repeated demand for Lifelight to be used as a contactless method for frequently monitoring the very most vulnerable of people – neonatal babies.

“In developing Lifelight, we’ve generated a unique algorithm training database from 12,500 patients, including approximately 800 children.

“We’re currently using this paediatric data to develop Lifelight Junior for children (1 to 18 years old).

“Through extrapolation, this is giving us insights on how, with the help of a brand-new algorithm training data set collected from infants, the Lifelight algorithms could adapt further for Lifelight Baby.

“Lifelight Baby will be developed under our impending CE Class IIa conformity.”

Lifelight is owned by health tech company xim Limited and based at Southampton Science Park.