Review of a frugal cooling mattress to induce therapeutic hypothermia for treatment of hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy in the UK NHS
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Published version
Author(s)
Dallera, G
Skopec, M
Barlow, J
Battersby, C
Harris, M
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) is a major cause of neonatal mortality and disability in the United Kingdom (UK) and has significant human and financial costs. Therapeutic hypothermia (TH), which consists of cooling down the newborn’s body temperature, is the current standard of treatment for moderate or severe cases of HIE. Timely initiation of treatment is critical to reduce risk of mortality and disability associated with HIE. Very expensive servo-controlled devices are currently used in high-income settings to induce TH, whereas low-income settings rely on the use of low-tech devices such as water bottles, ice packs or fans. Cooling mattresses made with phase change materials (PCMs) were recently developed as a safe, efficient, and affordable alternative to induce TH in low-income settings. This frugal innovation has the potential to become a reverse innovation for the National Health Service (NHS) by providing a simple, efficient, and cost-saving solution to initiate TH in geographically remote areas of the UK where cooling equipment might not be readily available, ensuring timely initiation of treatment while waiting for neonatal transport to the nearest cooling centre. The adoption of PCM cooling mattresses by the NHS may reduce geographical disparity in the availability of treatment for HIE in the UK, and it could benefit from improvements in coordination across all levels of neonatal care given challenges currently experienced by the NHS in terms of constraints on funding and shortage of staff. Trials evaluating the effectiveness and safety of PCM cooling mattresses in the NHS context are needed in support of the adoption of this frugal innovation. These findings may be relevant to other high-income settings that experience challenges with the provision of TH in geographically remote areas. The use of promising frugal innovations such as PCM cooling mattresses in high-income settings may also contribute to challenge the dominant narrative that often favours innovation from North America and Western Europe, and consequently fight bias against research and development from low-income settings, promoting a more equitable global innovation landscape.
Date Issued
2022-04-21
Date Acceptance
2022-03-28
ISSN
1744-8603
Publisher
BioMed Central
Journal / Book Title
Globalization and Health
Volume
18
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Frugal innovation
Reverse innovation
Therapeutic hypothermia
Hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy
Phase change materials
PHASE CHANGING MATERIAL
WHOLE-BODY HYPOTHERMIA
NEONATAL ENCEPHALOPATHY
BIRTH ASPHYXIA
TERM
Frugal innovation
Hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy
Phase change materials
Reverse innovation
Therapeutic hypothermia
Beds
Body Temperature
Humans
Hypothermia, Induced
Hypoxia-Ischemia, Brain
Infant, Newborn
State Medicine
Humans
Hypoxia-Ischemia, Brain
Body Temperature
Hypothermia, Induced
Beds
Infant, Newborn
State Medicine
1117 Public Health and Health Services
General & Internal Medicine
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 43