New App to Detect Jaundice in Newborns
Twitter has asked all its staffs across the world to work from home starting coming Monday.
Jaundice is a big liver problem mainly in developing countries like Asia and Africa. Now with the invention of a new smartphone app, users can easily check the eyes of newborn babies for jaundice in a very effective, low-cost way, identifying the causes that need immediate treatment.
Jaundice is a liver problem that causes the skin and whites of the eyes of any human beings turn yellow. The disease causes 114,000 newborn deaths and 178,000 cases of disability every year.
One-third of the deaths due to Jaundice occur in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Thus the new pilot study published in the medical journal PLOS ONE and the invention of the app by the researchers at the University College London (UCL) could be an important boost to the health care professionals who are working in the poorer regions.
Senior Author Terence Leung, of University College London’s medical physics and biomedical engineering department said, “In many parts of the world, midwives and nurses rely on sight alone to assess jaundice. However, this is unreliable, especially for newborns with darker skin”.
He also adds, “Our smartphone-based method provides a more robust assessment, ensuring serious cases do not go unnoticed. While we await the evidence of a larger trial, we believe that this method, used as an app, could help to prevent the deaths of newborn babies due to severe jaundice worldwide.”
Jaundice is caused due to the high levels of a yellow compound known as bilirubin produced during the normal breakdown of red blood cells. Though most of the Jaundice cases are harmless, in some cases they prove fatal for example a neurotoxic form of bilirubin can enter the brain, leading to death or disabilities like hearing loss, cognitive impairment, and cerebral palsy.
Newborns are suspected of having jaundice after birth in most of the cases but their condition sometimes is detected several days after birth when the child has been brought home.
In the current study, smartphone pictures of 37 newborn babies had been referred for blood tests. The images were later processed to remove distortions from the background light and yellowness of the eyes was found helpful in predicting the bilirubin levels.
The predictions based on image analysis were then compared to the normal blood test results, with the algorithm correctly matching all the cases that would normally require treatment.
The app was also helpful in identifying 60 percent of cases that did not require any treatment. The hand-held device costs around $6,000 and are recommended for use by the midwives. At present, the method is being used in a larger trial involving more than 500 babies in Ghana.
