Apollo Cradle has launched Advanced Technology Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (eNICU).

In a development that is expected to significantly improve neonatal care capabilities in India, Apollo Cradle, unveiled its ‘Advanced Technology Neonatal Intensive Care Unit’ (eNICU). The Unit will help significantly in monitoring and recording data of each baby bed in real-time. Through eNICU, Apollo Cradle, can now monitor minute details including medication levels, nutrition, feeding pattern, calorie and growth charts of babies in NICU across the country. This will be a one-stop workflow solution to assimilate and disseminate critical neonatal information.

The application is designed to procure all the responsibilities of various roles such as nurse, resident doctors, senior doctor, paediatrician and administrator. All essential parameters of a neonates’ progress like growth charts, medication profile and nutrition calculator are provided to reduce manual effort of tracing on paper. eNICU system uses technologies like data analytics and machine learning to study the accumulated historical data and use the same to provide predictive analytics customised for each individual baby.

During the launch of eNICU, Dr. Anupam Sibal, Group Medical Director, Apollo Hospitals Group & Senior Consultant Pediatric Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals stated “eNICU will be a great help to Apollo Cradle. It will help doctors and medical officials monitor each baby from a central location. The cloud-based system also manages doctors’ workflow, nursing workflow and resident doctor handover as well as provides the organisation with the benefits of cloud computing, while protecting data and optimising operations.”

On the occasion, Mr. Neeraj Garg, CEO, Apollo Health & Lifestyle Ltd. said “Being able to catch a disease at the pre-symptomatic stage is obviously a huge advantage. In a normal NICU, a baby’s weight changes need to be recorded daily and all medication dosages need to be calculated according to current weight. This cannot be done without integration of data that was being done manually. Apart from a significant reduction in the potential for errors, the efficiency and removal of redundancy that this new system brings is obviously very welcome.”

Dr. Avneet Kaur, Senior Consultant, Neonatology Department, Apollo Cradle Hospital said “The benefits of the new unit will significantly improve the efficacy of our neonatal services. One major advantage is that retrieval of records becomes easier as everything will now be recorded in digital format. The digitisation also reduces duplication errors as it removes the need for multiple manual data entry.”

“There are added benefits for doctors as the new system allows for integration of various neonatal measurement scores, precise medication and nutrition calculations and even act as a clinical decision support mechanism by notifying doctors of upcoming infection in pre- symptomatic stage,” Dr. Kaur added.

Dr. Gaurav Jawa, Senior Neonatology and Paediatric Specialist at Apollo Cradle spoke about this Paradigm shift in Neonatal Care. Every decade has seen a major change & evolution of Neonatology since 1980’s. Survival & discharge of extreme preemies (24+ weeks born babies) has improved a lot. A major boost is with the seamless quality of technology available. Ventilation & interventions are slowly taking a back seat & the target is to send home a neurologically intact/ healthy neonate. Digitization will help reduce errors & improve record keeping and assessment.