Case Study: INFANT improves neonatal brain monitoring with IBM Analytics

Enabling life-saving care for newborns by pioneering a novel method to help detect neurological problems

The Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT) faced the critical challenge of identifying neurological issues in newborns, as the expertise to interpret complex EEG data was limited to a small number of specialists who could not provide 24/7 coverage. This gap in care risked both under-treatment and over-treatment of vulnerable infants. To address this, INFANT partnered with vendor IBM and leveraged IBM InfoSphere Streams software to develop a solution.

IBM's solution was to help create Babylink, a cloud-hosted neuromonitoring platform. This system analyzes real-time EEG and vital-sign data using machine-learning algorithms to automatically detect neurological problems and alert clinicians. The result is a scalable decision-support tool that reduces dependence on scarce specialists, enables faster interventions to improve infant outcomes, and is designed for global deployment to hospitals.

Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT)

Geraldine Boylan

Professor of Neonatal Physiology at University College Cork and Director