With the shift in economic and technological growth, the Global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually. With such a high number, every day hundreds of newborns are introduced into our lives.
However, one of the very first challenges faced by neonates (a baby in the first 4 weeks of birth) is that of survival. The newly formed body of a neonate is incapable of keeping itself warm and can suffer from hypothermia, that’s why the warmth of the mother’s body is so vital. At the same time, sunlight is also very important for the growth of neonates in developing many bodily functions such as the health of his/her nervous system.
Sometimes, even all of these are not enough
Sometimes even a mother’s warmth cannot provide the required heat; sometimes sunlight cannot provide enough nutrients to the newborn.
For special cases such as those, incubators are absolutely essential for the neonate. Incubators can control and monitor the baby throughout its tough journey of survival.
The tough-to-swallow harsh pill of our reality is that a lot of clinics do not have the incubators readily available. On the flip sides, some hospitals’ few incubators are always filled and even if a parent manages an incubator at a hospital, the cost of appointing a baby can be astronomical.
30% of the deaths of neonates are due to the lack of accessibility to incubation facilities.
With no major development in recent years and only a select few working on the improvements of incubators, this number might just increase.
A false general consensus exists with the populace that medical equipment and good medical treatment must cost an arm and a leg. Development of medical equipment and solutions remain relatively stagnant nowadays due to the huge cost in research and Development (R&D) of a new concept.
The aforementioned problem is something Dr Dewan Choudhury wishes to change. He is a doctor, but unlike the stereotype, he has also huge interests in engineering and designing. With this unique combination, he sought to create a new project.
His idea was to bypass this cost barrier with the aid of 3-D printing technology.
With his access to 3-D printing and laser-cutting technology 100s of different prototypes can be modelled, built and tested at a fraction of the cost.
His brainchild is now named, “Bioforge”, - a team of engineers, doctors, designers and other like-minded individuals-. Bioforge is constantly looking for existing problems in the health-care centres, narrowing them down in terms of our urgency. After which we consult experts in relevant fields to gather accurate information which is then passed along our teams to think up a new angle, an innovative way, a more feasible way to tackle that particular issue. Our new project is the redesigned Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) built using aforementioned techniques.
This is no ordinary establishment.
Bioforge can quite literally change the world with its new design of NICUs with far greater capabilities and features made at 1/10th of the cost of current market models. With its easy-to-assemble nature, this can also be set up in distressed areas, such as refugee camps.
Even after our NICU project, Bioforge’s story will not come to an end at this, we wish to keep moving forward in reducing the cost of medical equipment thus directly reducing the cost of healthcare.
