Researchers Discover Effective Way Of Detecting Jaundice In Newborns Using Smartphone App

Researchers from University College London (UCL) and the University of Ghana have discovered an app called neoSCB to detect severe jaundice in newborn babies by scanning their eyes.

According to a new study, the smartphone app (neoSCB) was used to scan the eyes of more than 300 newborns in Ghana following an initial pilot study on 37 infants in 2020.

The programme which was created by physicians and engineers at UCL was used to analyse photographs captured on a smartphone to measure the yellowness in the whites of newborns' eyes, which is an indication of neonatal jaundice.

The app is designed to provide an early diagnosis of jaundice that requires treatment, although vision analysis is unreliable.

The study compared the app's performance to traditional screening methods and discovered that it properly identified 74 of 76 highly jaundiced newborns out of 336 babies evaluated.

The accuracy of the most popular screening approach, a non-invasive instrument known as a transcutaneous bilirubin meter, which properly identified all 76 babies with jaundice, was found to be in line with the findings of the study.

The study indicated that the app is as excellent as the commercial gadgets now suggested, according to Dr Terence Leung of UCL, who invented the technology underlying the app.

"All that is required is a smartphone, which costs less than a tenth of the price of a commercial gadget," he stated.

"We hope that once rolled out widely, our technology can be used to save the lives of newborns in parts of the world that lack access to expensive screening devices," he said.

Dr Christabel Enweronu-Laryea of the University of Ghana, who led the study, said the app method was "acceptable" to moms in the study's urban and rural locations.

"Mothers easily devised ways to keep the baby's eye open, most often by initiating breastfeeding," she said.

The software "has the potential to avert mortality and impairment worldwide in many different contexts," according to senior author Dr Judith Meek of University College London Hospitals.