Preemie

To grow as they should, low birth weight (LBW) infants typically need more nutrition than is provided by their mother’s milk, so the milk needs to be fortified to avoid undernourishment. Mother’s milk is important because infant formula is missing the unique class of nutritional fibre called human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), which are critical to the proper development of the infant’s immune system and microbiome. Since both infant’s needs and mother’s milk vary over time, the only way to ensure adequate nourishment is to analyse the milk for its unique composition, and provide individualized fortification by adding the missing quantities of each macronutrient. Preemie is a system that reliably measures human milk composition and automatically suggests the fortification of the milk tested, based on the infant’s necessities. The system is also able to correlate the growth of the infant with the detailed nourishment given. The Preemie system is based on a Near-InfraRed spectroscopic sensor able to test small samples of human mothers’ milk. The information acquired is then processed by an Artificial Intelligence engine working in the cloud and the results are delivered to the user via a dedicated mobile application. Preemie measures human milk’s key parameters. Preemie also measures the level of milk spoilage, a critical value for the assessment of human milk in milk banks. The healthcare provider can choose among international guidelines for human milk fortification, or set customised needs. Preemie takes into account the composition of the fortifiers available in the market and provides automatic calculation of the amount of fortifiers to be added at each feeding. The software also keeps track of the feedings via a web-based dashboard, enabling correlation with each infant’s growth.