IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - 14

By
HeatHer Wax

Giving Babies
a Better Chance
Carolyn MCGrEGor ModErnizEs
thE infant MonitorinG systEM

E

Photo courtesy of carolyn mcgregor

Each year, more than one-half million premature babies are born in the United States,
meaning they come into the world after less than 37 full weeks in the womb. They are
tiny and fragile and often have underdeveloped lungs and weak immune systems. They
can have problems digesting food and gaining weight, and many develop necrosis or
sepsis, a type of blood poisoning. When these babies are born in rural or remote towns,
often hours away from the nearest neonatal intensive care unit, the situation is even
more dire. The doctors who care for these babies are faced with extremely difficult and
complex decisions about how to treat them, whether to transport them, and how best
to monitor their condition and stave off infection.
The volume of biomedical data that emerges from monitoring these babies every
second-information including heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and oxygen levels-is enormous. To be manageable, readings from each monitor are typically summarized and printed out on a large piece
of paper every 30 minutes. It's a method
that results in a huge data loss, says Carolyn McGregor, a Canada research chair in
health informatics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) in Oshawa, Ontario. Modernizing the system-
improving the way doctors use computer
and engineering solutions to analyze and
store a larger amount of information-
could improve survival rates for premature
babies, she says. In other words, it could
save lives.
McGregor and her team at UOIT's new
state-of-the-art Health Informatics Laboratory are now working to extend prototype software developed by researchers
at IBM's Watson Research Center in New
York (made available under IBM's First of
a Kind program, which is designed to link
McGregor's research looks to better manage an enormous amout of biomedical data.
innovative technologies with real-world
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2009.000000
10.1109/MWIE.2009.932508

14

IEEE womEn In EngInEErIng magazInE

June 2009

1942-065x/09/$25.00©2009Ieee



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - Cover1
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - Cover2
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - 1
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IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - 40
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - Cover3
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2009 - Cover4
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