Giving Compass' Take:

• Rice University students and researchers developed a high quality, non-invasive monitoring system that can detect t signs of high intracranial pressure.

• How will this new system revolutionize health of newborns? How are donors currently supporting research in children's hospitals?

• Read more about funding maternal and child health.

Rice University students, working with Texas Children’s Hospital doctors at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, designed the seemingly simple but sophisticated system to monitor high intracranial pressure (ICP) within the skulls of infants. The condition affects more than 400,000 babies every year.

Trauma in the brain can cause ICP, which is a marker for hydrocephalus, a buildup of excess cerebral spinal fluid within the brain’s ventricles.

The monitor, dubbed Bend-Aid, combines an old-school adhesive bandage with a sensor that has the potential to replace two current techniques: Palpating the child’s soft spot to get a general sense of pressure, or drilling into the skull to insert an accurate but highly invasive sensor.

The non-invasive method allows clinicians to monitor babies for as long as necessary to build a record of intracranial pressure over time.

“What physicians usually do is feel the soft spot where the skull hasn’t fused together yet,” says team member Patricia Thai. “If it’s tense, that’s a sign of higher pressure. If it’s sunken, it’s low pressure.

“But it’s really subjective between doctors and previous research showed it’s not very accurate. There’s a need for a quantitative and continuous method to measure pressure in the skulls of infants, to see changes in ICP over time.”

Read the full article about a monitor that can detect pressure in baby heads by Mike Williams at Futurity.