A team of clinicians and engineers has developed a smartphone application called neonatal scleral-conjunctival bilirubin (neoSCB) to screen neonatal jaundice in low-resource countries. The app quantifies the yellowness of the sclera, a sign of neonatal jaundice. The app was tested on 336 newborns , and the results were compared with a commercially available transcutaneous bilirubinometer (TcB) . The app detected newborns with total serum bilirubin of >14.62 mg/dL (250 µmol/L).
Among 336 newborns, 79 had jaundice, and neoSCB detected 74 of them accurately while TcB detected 76 cases. Commercial TcBs can cost about £4,000, which is not affordable in low-income countries. Therefore, considering that neoSCB is as good as the commercially available TcB for screening neonatal jaundice, it is a potential, sensitive , specific , and affordable tool for neonatal jaundice screening. Do you…
