I-Corps: Automated, noninvasive critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) screening algorithm/software

There are nearly 4 million babies born in the US every year. All US newborns, and most internationally, undergo oxygen saturation (SpO2) based Critical Congenital Heart Defects (CCHD) screening with pulse oximeters. However, this screening still misses hundreds of babies with life-threatening heart defects in the US every year.

The proposed NeoPOSE technology could prevent deaths associated with late detection of heart defects in babies. Moreover, its noninvasive approach and automated interpretation make it easy to use to reduce nursing time associated with CCHD screening. Most US states (80%) require reporting of the CCHD screening data to public health departments.

Most health care facilities submit data manually, which is labor intensive and error prone. Even those with automated reporting have data management difficulties that are labor intensive. NeoPOSE will ease the data transmission process while improving its accuracy, thus decreasing manual labor associated with data management and also providing more reliable data to guide future CCHD screening research and quality improvements.

This I-Corps project explores the commercial potential of noninvasive blood flow measurement technology for improved timely detection of Critical Congenital Heart Defects (CCHD). In their current form, oxygen saturation (SpO2) blood flow measurements cannot be used clinically for this purpose. The proposed NeoPOSE technology takes readily available, yet unused, noninvasive pulse oximetry data and makes them clinically relevant.

In addition to detection of CCHD, the proposed technology may be helpful for a number of other medical diseases with abnormal blood flow (i.e. atherosclerosis or blood vessel graft monitoring).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.