mOm’s revolutionary neonatal incubator designed, developed and manufactured in Britain has seen its first ever clinical use in a UK hospital, this month.
Created by mOm Founder & CEO, James Roberts, and developed by mOm & the engineering team at eg technology, this innovative, lightweight incubator helped to sustain a premature baby’s life at St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey.
The mOm incubator was originally conceived to save the lives of premature babies in challenging, low/middle income settings; as well as provide more options for standard neonatal care in the UK and Industrialised economies. mOm initially approached eg technology to help develop and engineer their concept for a fold-away neonatal incubator. With the requirement that the unit should be designed with accessibility in mind and suitable for use with all major international power voltages, eg technology undertook the entire end-to-end development of the incubator, from initial concept to transfer to manufacture.
eg technology provided mOm with a fully integrated engineering resource, across software, electronics, mechanical engineering and industrial design, working to a clearly defined, phased development programme to meet the clinical and business goals of the client. As with all medical device development, safety and efficacy were central to the programme and eg technology engineers were able to use their expertise to ensure that the product was developed in accordance with IEC 60601, IEC 62304, ISO 14971, all within eg’s own ISO 13485 quality management system.
eg Director and Co-Founder, Andrew Ede says: “It has been a privilege to be part of this pioneering project. The complexity of the programme coupled with the development taking place during a global pandemic meant the team had to draw on their broad experience and multi-disciplinary expertise to ensure the project maintained momentum. The regulations around incubator development are, quite rightly, stringent, so to develop a product which meets the exacting regulations from the point of view of device safety including IEC 60601, as well as medical device software to IEC 62304 Class C, is testament to the skill of our engineers.”
James Roberts, Founder of mOm, commented, “Sustaining a child’s life in our incubator for the first time has been a humbling experience and a monumental step in transforming this dream into a practical reality. It is unacceptable today for one million premature babies to die each year, when most of these deaths can be easily prevented. An idea that was once scribbled down on paper now has the potential to impact many lives and I thank the great team at eg technology for helping to turn this dream into a reality”.
As a product design engineering and development consultancy, eg technology specialise in taking products from concept to realisation, bridging the gap between innovation and market-ready products. This project utilised the full spectrum of our in-house expertise in software, electronics and mechanical engineering as well as industrial design, human factors, quality assurance and project management.
For more information on getting your technology or ideas to market, or to chat with one of the eg team about your product design and development requirements, please visit www.egtechnology.co.uk/contact.