PALO ALTO, California– Jaundice is a condition of the skin where a yellow substance called bilirubin accumulates in the body. This condition manifests itself as a yellow pigmentation of the skin. It is caused by the liver’s inability to filter out dead blood cells. Newborns are often afflicted with jaundice; during pregnancy the mother’s liver filters out the old blood cells, but when the baby is born its liver may not be developed enough to take over.
While jaundice is not often thought of as a life-threatening condition, it certainly can be. If left untreated, the build up of bilirubin in the baby’s blood can cause kernicterus, which is a type of brain damage.
Fortunately, jaundice is easily treated with high volumes of breast milk (which in less severe cases can help remove the bilirubin) or in more serious cases with phototherapy. During phototherapy, the baby is exposed to a simple blue light which helps break down the bilirubin in the skin and the rest of the body.
Unfortunately, in the developing world, where access to technology is limited or hampered, jaundice is still killing hundreds of thousands.
In India and Nigeria, the problem is especially pressing. It’s not that hospitals and clinics don’t have access to the lights—they certainly do. The problem is that the lights rely on several fluorescent light bulbs that can have lives that last as little as 50 treatments. Without any spare parts lying around and access to replacements hampered by costs, these life-saving lamps are left unused.
It is precisely this problem that the brilliant minds at Silicon Valley’s D-Rev (Design Revolution) have targeted with their Brilliance Unit. Robust and cheap, Brilliance is the answer to India, Nigeria and the developing world’s fight against jaundice.
For starters, Brilliance sports superior light bulbs. Using long-life LEDs rather than the compact fluorescent bulbs, the unit is capable of eradicating bilirubin in 1,000 newborns before petering out.
Brilliance also makes replacing bulbs easier by using less of them. In standard LED phototherapy devices, units use hundreds of diodes; this drives up the price and makes replacing bulbs costly and difficult. The techs at D-Rev used computer modeling to optimize light dispersal using only 12 LEDs—cost effective and less maintenance.
Most standard fluorescent phototherapy units use integrated cooling systems to cool the excess heat from the bulbs. This increases costs and adds another moving, breakable component to the unit. Brilliance uses passive cooling. With fewer bulbs, the units are able to take advantage of exposure to air to regulate cooling. This in turn allows power optimization and LED maximization because the units simply use less energy.
But does it work?
During testing at Stanford University, Brilliance outperformed its state-of-the-art counterparts. Then brilliance saved its first life. Hope, born in Ogbomosho, Nigeria was treated with Brilliance in a neonatal care unit. Prior to the treatment, doctors believed that Hope would need a blood transfusion because of the severity of his jaundice, but were afraid to attempt the transfusion because of his low birth weight. After one night sleeping under Brilliance’s big blue lights, Hope no longer needed the transfusion.
It works. It is cheap. It is available in a nearby developing world clinic saving babies. Brilliant.