GE CitizenshipLullaby Incubators in the Middle East & India
Published by the United Nations as a strategic priority for the globe, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were established to help bring visibility to the world’s most pressing problems. Millennium Development Goal 4 is to “reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.”
The largest death rate for children under the age of five years is within the 28-day neonatal period of life. According to the World Health Organization, 139 million births occur globally each year. Of these, approximately 4 million neonates (less than one month old) die each year from mostly preventable causes. About 10 to12 percent are premature and require some support to manage their body temperature in the NICU. And at least 50 percent occur in underserved urban settings where access to affordable technology remains limited. According to various neonatal experts, prematurity is one of the most common conditions requiring medical attention in newborns.
To make an impact on Goal 4, the rate of deaths in the neonatal period must be reduced. GE’s new Lullaby™ Incubator product line will have an impact on helping care for neonates, and assist the world in reaching these Millennium Development Goals — helping to reduce the number of infant deaths immediately after birth by providing warmth for newborns and resuscitation needs for those that experience birth trauma.
GE Healthcare recently launched the Lullaby Incubator XP and Lullaby Incubator TR products in the Middle East and India to help clinicians better manage thermally sensitive infants in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) and during transport. The Lullaby Incubators improve access to care in urban and semi-urban settings, with an affordable and easy-to-use infant warmer system and resuscitation option encompassing airway management, suction, etc.
Both Lullaby XP and TR were designed and developed at GE’s R&D Center in Turkey and are part of a Maternal/Infant Care program to make high end technology more affordable, reliable and accessible to larger segments of society. GE Healthcare plans to export the incubator systems across the Middle East as well as to Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific.
GE’s Lullaby Incubator XP combines high levels of clinical performance with a simple flexible design, and easy to read controls for skin and air temperature. The Lullaby XP creates an advanced microenvironment that enables providers to spend more time on direct patient care and less time on system operation.
The Lullaby TR creates a stable transport environment for neonates that enable the provider to transfer the smallest and most vulnerable patients reliably and efficiently. Both Lullaby XP and Lullaby TR assist healthcare professionals in supporting the specialized needs of patients and families across the entire maternal-infant continuum.
In addition, the Lullaby Incubator is being priced to reduce infant warmer acquisition costs for hospitals in developing nations by up to 70 percent of the average price of current warmers available in that marketplace. This will help increase the hospital’s ability to reach neonatal patients that they couldn’t afford to care for previously.
