Posted by christina
Thu, 21 Oct 2010 07:54:00 GMT
It was 5:30 am on a cold Sunday morning when my cell phone woke me up.“Hi Kamalika, great news, can you come over just now?” - a voice from the hospital where we were conducting the clinical study said. There was a baby born at the hospital 5 hours ago. Her parents had given consent for participation in our study with one condition – they needed to talk to someone from Embrace before trial related assessments were done. I gladly hopped into a rickshaw and was off to the hospital.
Our participant was a little baby girl, with the cutest dimples, all wrapped in pink. While the study nurse performed the screening assessment, I listened to the proud first-time parents chatting away about their precious newborn. The baby was randomized into the non-Embrace, hospital standard of care group. Initially, the baby was under cold stress, but by the end of the study phase, her body temperature was within normal limits.
Her parents were ecstatic, their only request, which neither the study team nor I could fulfil, was to place the baby in the Embrace Infant Warmer. They were so curious after seeing pictures of the first babies in the Warmer, and were interested to see the device at work. They said, “At least informally, after the study is over?”, but we had to decline.
The next evening, I got a surprising call. The mother of the baby, was requesting that I spell my name in English and Hindi because they wanted to name their daughter after me. I was stunned, what an amazing honor.
If our study, a picture of a baby in the Embrace Infant Warmer, and the device itself could create such a strong impact in the minds of new parents, then I know we’re well on our way to helping millions of babies around the world.
-Kamalika C.
Embrace Lead Clinical Researcher
Posted by christina
Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:47:00 GMT
For Embrace, reading stories like this in the media saddens us, but provides us with more fuel for the fire. We are working tirelessly so that, hopefully, 5 years from now, we won’t have to read about these stories any longer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/health/28cases.html?_r=1
A snip-it from the article:
So it was on that rainy Sunday evening that there were six women in active labor in the emergency room. And soon one of them, in her late teens, gave birth to a tiny boy, just 2 pounds 3 ounces. A neonatologist on our team estimated that he was two months premature. (The mother claimed she hadn’t even known she was pregnant.) Once the baby was born, we dried and swaddled him and started looking for a place where he could be cared for until he was stable enough to be sent home. There were no working incubators at the hospital, nor any free beds in the pediatric tents, and we had no luck finding incubators at other hospitals.
Then an American physician at another medical camp told us that he had faced a similar situation some days before, and had built his own incubator — “MacGyver” style, as he put it. He suggested we do the same. So that’s what we did. We took a cardboard box from the medical supply room, padded it with some surgical drapes and a blanket and found a desk lamp with a working bulb to serve as a source of heat. Voilà! Our youngest patient now had an incubator.
The next morning we tried to persuade the attending Haitian pediatrician to accept the baby to the pediatric tents. “Don’t be absurd!” she scoffed, as I recall. “A baby that small will not make it. He has no chance of survival, and we have no spare beds to waste.”
Tags babies, Haiti, New, Times, York
Posted by christina
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:33:00 GMT
Embrace showcased the first version of our product at a national neonatal conference in India (Neocon, Jaipur) and received a tremendous response!
Over two days, we had nearly 100 doctors sign up to purchase the product. Interest was high across the board, from private practitioners to government hospitals. Doctors would fetch their friends amongst the crowd, and bring them to our booth to rave about our product as if they were Embrace salesmen. One doctor wanted to buy the product on the spot, and then got upset when we told him that we couldn’t sell them yet. Other doctors told us about their current clinic conditions, and how the Embrace Infant Warmer would be so useful to them. It was rewarding to hear not only how needed the product was, but also how eagerly people wanted to buy it.
Embrace is excited about this amazingly positive feedback; we are eager to launch the product this winter and start saving lives!
Posted by christina
Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:03:00 GMT
Last Thursday, October 8th 2010, Jane and I joined Katherine and David DeWilde at the World Affairs Council Dinner held at the San Francisco Ritz. The dinner honored the following three men, for their role in advancing technology and innovation for the public good: Paul Otellini, President and Chief Executive Officer, Intel Corporation, was honored for his leadership of Intel’s strategic development of the next generation of math and science innovators; John Hennessy, president of Stanford University was honored for his leadership in Stanford’s on-going role as a powerful engine that cultivates ideas and entrepreneurs creating innovative new companies and solutions; finally, Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation accepted the nomination on behalf of the foundation for its contributions to global development, education and the practice of philanthropy.David and Katherine showed us a great time and introduced us to a bunch of extremely interesting folks who were extremely receptive to Embrace’s cause! Thanks David and Katherine for a wonderful night!
-Ana M.A.
Embrace Business Development Manager
Tags Affairs, Council, dewilde, Dinner, World
Posted by christina
Mon, 11 Oct 2010 07:30:00 GMT
Hi Embrace,
Our grandson was born two weeks early on September 24, 2010. He and his mom were sent home September 26th despite the fact that they could not regulate his body temp for an extended period of time. Their insurance company has a nurse who visits the home of newborns the day after they are released. Luckily she was concerned enough about his temp and pulse that she asked the parents if she could stop by the next morning. When she arrived his pulse was 75 and his temp 95; his birth weight of 5.75 had dropped to 4.14. We believe if she had not been so attentive he would have died. He was taken to the Children’s Hospital emergeny room here in Aurora, CO and admitted to the NICU. He was put on oxygen and an electronic monitoring heat lamp. After tests showed no underlying cause other than the low weight he was sent home. His parents continue to struggle to keep his temp up but it is an up hill battle. Your product is an answer to our prayers if it is now available.
-Ginnie, Colorado, USA
Tags need, NICU, premature, US, warmth