Jaundice In Newborns Will Be Detected By A Smartphone App

In the first few days after a baby is born, jaundice is a seemingly common condition not only in India but across the globe. But now, a team from the University of Washington is in the process of developing a smartphone app, known as BiliCam, which might make it easier for newborns to be monitored by parents and doctors alike, and identify if a blood test is needed to confirm jaundice.

One of the primary and most identifiable sign that a baby is afflicted with jaundice is a yellowish tinge of the skin. This however, is not easy to spot, and might make an infant terribly sick if the condition is left untreated.

Jaundice occurs when a substance called bilirubin builds up in the tissues and blood of the body. Bilirubin is a natural byproduct of the breakdown of red blood cells. Excess bilirubin is usually metabolized by the liver, but this process can be slow in newborns due to the fact that their liver isn’t functioning optimally as yet. If jaundice not treated in time, it may lead to brain damage as well as a potentially fatal condition known as kernicterus.

An effective home screening tool for jaundice needed

The most indicative test for jaundice is usually a blood test. However, the need of the hour is an effective home screening tool that can aid in deciding if a blood test should be done. There are some hospitals wherein a non-invasive screening tool for jaundice is available, but it is a costly proposition and not suitable for home use.

The tool devised by the team from the University of Washington (UW) combines a smartphone app with algorithms in a cloud and a color calibration card to produce results in few minutes. James Taylor, a professor of pediatrics at the UW explains that despite the fact that newborn babies are jaundiced, they are sent home from the hospitals before their bilirubin levels have had a chance to peak. With the help of the smartphone app, parents of newborns can get an accurate picture of bilirubin in the first few days after the baby goes home.

How BiliCam works

The app requires the health care provider and the parent to place the business card-sized calibration card on the naked torso of the newborn. A flash-assisted photo of the baby and the card is then taken using the smartphone. Key data from the photo taken is then sent by the app to the cloud using a data connection that the smartphone provides. This data is acquired with the help of the calibration card, which accounts for differences in skin tones and lighting conditions. The data is then analyzed by algorithms in the cloud and within a matter of minutes, a report on the likely levels of bilirubin in the newborn is sent to the smartphone.

Comparison of the app with traditional jaundice screening tools

The app has so far been tested by the team in a clinical study in the newborn nursery at the UW Medical Center, involving 100 newborns and their families. Medical director professor Taylor, who led the study, conducted a blood test and screening with BiliCam on the newborns, when they were between two to five days old. According to the result, BiliCam was shown to have performed as well as or better than the current traditional screening tool. While the idea isn’t for the app to completely replace blood tests to denote bilirubin levels, but to assist parents in knowing what next steps they might need to take.

The team reveals that the algorithms in the cloud as opposed to the smartphone make it more seamless to be improved over time. Professor Taylor and his team now plan to test their BiliCam app on up to 1,000 newborns with a range of skin pigments. This will allow them to denote whether the algorithms are robust enough to use with babies of all skin colors and ethnicities.

Conversions to take place over the year

According to the team, it should take about a year for doctors to start using BiliCam as an alternative to the current screening tool for bilirubin. While patents are still pending, the team is hopeful that the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) will approve the app, allowing parents to use it at home within the next two years.

Professor Taylor and his team are excited about the potential of BiliCam in developing countries and resource-poor areas where many newborn deaths are caused by jaundice. They foresee it to make a magnanimous difference in areas where there might not be adequate tools to measure bilirubin with, but do have decent infrastructure for mobile phones.

The team’s work will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, which takes place in September in Seattle. The research behind the app was funded by the Coulter Foundation and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
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