Each year, about one million babies throughout the world die of complications due to premature birth. Many of them could have been saved if given access to an incubator. But this expensive device is sorely lacking in developing countries. A young British researcher says he has found a solution -- a low-cost inflatable incubator.

Doctors say many expectant mothers in developing countries give birth prematurely, especially in refugee camps, largely because of poor diet and unhealthy living conditions.

Premature birth is the biggest killer of children worldwide. Because these tiny babies are born before their lungs are fully developed, they are more susceptible to often deadly infections. But they could survive if placed in an incubator, where they would continue to develop in the closed chamber and warm, controlled environment.

However with a price tag of around $50,000, incubators are out of reach even for some hospitals.

Design engineering student James Roberts, 23,  of Britain says his $400 inflatable incubator may help solve this problem.

"It's basically an insulated piece of air, so it's like the difference between double and single glazing, so it's easier to keep the inside at a stable heat environment, heat temperature," he said.

The inflated incubator is collapsible and when folded resembles an ordinary travel bag.

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"HIT has been shown to help some patients, but it has also been shown to perhaps provide some complications in care, or less than adequate care, when messages are not received, when messages are interrupted or when messages are routed to the inappropriate person," explained Milisa Manojlovich, PhD, RN, CCRN, associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN) and member of U-M's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Manojlovich will serve as the primary investigator on a new $1.6 million grant from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that will focus on health IT's effects on nurse-physician communication. Manojlovich and her co-investigators will look at how communication technologies make it easier or harder for doctors and nurses to communicate with each other. They hope their research will identify the optimal way to support effective communication while fostering improved and positive interdisciplinary team-based care.

Until the research is completed, Manojlovich offers some simple procedures clinicians can begin to adopt right now to help alleviate common problems with digital communication:

1.   Use multiple forms of technology  

Just like there is more than one way to treat a cold, there is more than one way to communicate electronically. Utilizing multiple forms of technology to communicate important information, or sometimes even reverting back to the "old-fashioned" ways of making a phone call or talking in person, can help ensure the receipt of a message in an environment that is often inundated.

"One of the things we are going to investigate is this idea of matching the message to the medium," Manojlovich said. "So depending on the message that you want to send, you will identify what is the best medium to send that message."

Using the current Ebola situation in Texas as an example, Manojlovich explained that using multiple forms of technology as a back-up to solely documenting the information in the EHR system could have mitigated the breakdown in communication that occurred. "Although the clinician did her job by entering the information into the EHR, she maybe should have texted or emailed the physician with the information or found someone to talk to in person about the situation. What we are trying to do with this study is see if there is another way that messages like this could have been transmitted better."

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