Motorized pacifier helps preemies
Patents are pending on two inventions from KU Professor Steve Barlow that are aimed at shortening premature babies' hospital stays. A company, KC BioMediX Inc., licensed the devices: N-Trainer and Actifier, which employ an electronic pacifier to assess and then improve a newborn baby's essential motor skills, such as sucking, swallowing and breathing.
Delayed development of these functions can lengthen a newborn's stay in the hospital and affect its growth. Currently, a baby's ability to suck and feed naturally is usually assessed and monitored by inserting a gloved finger into the baby's mouth. This procedure provides a rough estimate at best. Once a diagnosis is made, the current standard of treatment is to wait for the baby to develop the ability naturally.
Barlow's devices, which he co-developed with colleague Don Finan of the University of Colorado, provide a high-tech assessment of the baby while "teaching" it a normal pattern of sucking behavior, allowing it to feed naturally.
"Along with colleague Don Finan at the University of Colorado, Dr. Barlow has developed a valuable technology that shows great commercial potential," said Jim Baxendale, director of Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property at KU.
Barlow, professor of speech-language-hearing and director of KU's Communication Neuroscience Laboratories, worked under a $2 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health and supplied nearly 400 babies at hospitals in Kansas City and Topeka with the devices as part of their neonatal care. Babies in this clinical trial continued to be assessed by the Actifier for up to two years.
If further trials and product development are successful, it's possible the N-Trainer and Actifier could become standard equipment in neonatal intensive care units.
KU and the University of Colorado issued a license to KC BioMediX that grants it the sole right to commercialize the research, in exchange for royalty payments. The company was formed earlier this year, with Mike Litscher, Lenexa, as president and David Stalling, Lenexa, as secretary and treasurer. Both have extensive experience in the management and start-up of research-based technology companies.
