Audrey Bowden, Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor’s Faculty Fellow and associate professor of biomedical and electrical engineering, has won a grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to develop a novel noninvasive smartphone-integrated device to provide accurate, point-of-care detection of jaundice in newborns of all skin tones.

Newborns have immature liver function that is inefficient at metabolizing bilirubin, a yellowish pigment that is made during the normal breakdown of red blood cells. Consequently, nearly 80 percent of preterm and 60 percent of term babies develop hyperbilirubinemia, a potentially fatal form of neonatal jaundice, within a week of their birth. The gold standard for detecting hyperbilirubinemia is the use of frequent blood tests to measure bilirubin levels, but this approach is expensive and painful and increases likelihood of infection… Continue reading.