Sleeping Bag Incubator

Embrace’s new sleeping bag incubator is a low cost portable incubator for premature, under-weight newborns that has saved over 22,000 babies around the world. It is safe, easy to clean material that is made of sanitized medical grade plastic and is reusable 50 times. The bag prevents the baby from getting hypothermia and one use lasts for 6 long hours. The heat pack uses minimal energy and it has a wax box to heat itself. It also balances the temperature of the user, absorbing heat from the infant if they are too hot and surrounding them with warmth when they are cold. This invention not only improves the health and safety of infants but it’s also good for the environment.

The Embrace incubator has saved a lot of babies in places like Africa, Honduras, India, and other parts of Asia. Without the incubator the doctors or parents would either lay the baby down next to warm water bottle, under a lamp, or just wrap the baby in blankets. These methods don’t work well. Newborns can’t regulate their body temperature because they haven’t developed brown fat. The sleeping bag incubator also keeps the baby safe because it is portable so the little one is always with their mom which will help them be close to food and family and, if something goes wrong, the guardian is there.  It is also good for our environment because the sleeping bag only uses minimal electricity. But there are also challenges.

In some places electricity is hard to find so it might be difficult to warm the heat pack. Another issue is location. Most babies who need this invention are far from the Embrace headquarters so it’s hard to send these specialized sleeping bags to the people in need. Hospitals that already have a supply of incubators could run out. Using science and math there are solutions to these problems.

Thinking like an engineer I have come up with some solutions to these challenges. For the electricity problem my solution is to put solar panels on the heating box that the heat pack utilizes. This would work because most of the countries who need these incubator have a lot of sunshine and that is what solar panels use to create power. For the challenge with shipping the sleeping bags it is cheaper and easier to send large amounts. Doctors could collect data on how many premature babies are born each year. The hospital could order that amount of incubators and a few extra for the next year.

In conclusion, I think Embrace’s new sleeping bag incubator improves the health and safety of babies without hurting the environment. With a few changes like solar panels and data collection, it could save even more babies.

References:

Embraceglobal.org. Retrieved on 1/31/16. No author indicated.

Garun, Natt (2012).  Embrace is a life-saving sleeping bag for infants without access to incubators. Digitaltrends.com, retrieved on 1/31/16.

Thorpe, Devin (2013). This young social entrepreneur hopes to save one million babies. Forbes.com, retrieved on 1/31/16.

Wikipedia, “Embrace (non-profit)”.  Retrieved on 1/31/16.  No author indicated.