Teams will design, build, and demonstrate a wearable device to monitor respiration rate in infants. In other words, the device will show how many breaths a baby takes in one minute. All MESA clubs will receive a starter kit with various parts that can be used in the project. Other materials will be provided by students. As with all engineering design projects, the team will have to work within a set budget.

Engineers solve problems. Some design bridges to cross rivers. Some design computer programs to help us with our daily tasks. Some work on ways to travel to Mars. Others design systems to keep people safe in cars or to make sure the food we eat is safe. Often, the problems engineers tackle are very complex and involve many ideas from different fields of study. As a result, engineers often work on multi-disciplinary teams with biologists, chemists, mathematicians, and other scientists.

Because healthcare is a concern for all of us, many engineers work on solutions to help people live safer, healthier lives. Advances in technology are changing healthcare at a rapid pace and engineers are playing an important role in finding new ways to keep people healthy. The use of wearable technology in medicine and health care is a great example. Think about the impact the wearable insulin pump has had on people with diabetes. This is just one example of the benefits wearable devices can have on the quality of people’s lives. As engineers continue to develop new technologies, more and more wearable devices will be developed to promote healthy habits and to help people stay healthy. In the not-so-distant future, wearable devices will be widely available and will have a huge impact on the health of many people. In fact, wearable devices will probably be a regular part of normal, everyday healthcare. Some of these devices may save many, many lives.

Many people realize the potential that wearable devices have to improve quality of life and even save lives. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation issued a Grand Challenge that involved using wearable technology to improve the health of mothers and babies in low-resource countries. More about the Gates Foundation Grand Challenge can be found here. According to the World Health Organization’s Integrated Management of Neonatal and Childhood Illness (IMNCI) Guidelines, there are seven critical indicators of severe newborn illness. These include difficulty feeding, convulsions, movement only when stimulated, respiratory rate =>60/minute, severe chest indrawing, body temperature > 37.5°C, and body temperature < 35.5°C. A wearable device that could detect these indicators in babies has the potential to save many lives. Drawing on the IMNCI criteria, engineers, biologists, and other scientists at JHU Applied Physics Laboratory teamed up with doctors and biomedical engineers at Johns Hopkins Medical School to develop wearable technology to improve the health of babies. More information about the NeMo (Neonatal Monitoring) group at JHU can be found here and in this article.