NEONATAL TECHNOLOGIES
THEME LEAD
Professor Don Sharkey
LOCATION
Nottingham Children’s Hospital
NEONATAL CARE
Care for high-risk newborns has improved considerably in the last few decades.
However, prematurity remains a significant global health issue. Prematurity leads to widespread organ injury and is responsible for 50% of perinatal mortality. In 2015, prematurity was the leading cause of death for children under 5 years worldwide, with 45% of deaths occurring in the neonatal period (the first 28 days of life).
Survival for premature infants is improving in developed countries but subsequent morbidity such as brain injury and chronic lung disease remain significant problems.
Neonatal care has also made significant improvements for poorly infants born at term, resulting in fewer babies dying or having long-term disabilities. More advanced monitoring and imaging has also given greater insight, allowing clinical teams to deliver more targeted therapies and clinical trials.
THEME FOCUS
The Neonatal Technologies theme has the following focus:
- To advance neonatal resuscitation.
- To improve the accuracy of neonatal monitoring.
- To advance contactless monitoring on neonatal units.
- To increase the safety of inter-hospital neonatal transfer to improve outcomes.
- To advance neonatal care through artificial intelligence and computer science.
THEME LEAD
PROFESSOR DON SHARKEY
Professor Don Sharkey is Clinical Associate Professor of Neonatal Medicine at the University of Nottingham and Neonatal Intensivist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Don is an academic neonatologist with a broad research portfolio aimed at reducing major morbidities in newborn infants. Don’s main research focus is in healthcare technology for babies and children, focusing neonatal resuscitation, neonatal monitoring and diagnostics, and computer vision and machine learning techniques.
