Every year, 800.000 babies are born extremely preterm (<28 weeks of age) worldwide. These infants are usually transferred to an air-based neonatal intensive care unit to support their heart and lung development. Exposure to air, however, leads to many complications, because the lungs are not fully developed yet. The perinatal life support (PLS) project aims to develop a novel, alternative environment, more similar to the mother’s womb. In this PLS system, extremely premature babies would be transferred to an environment where the lungs remain filled with fluid and the umbilical cord will be attached to an artificial placenta to improve their organ development and ease the transition to newborn life. This project aims to increase the chances of survival for extremely premature babies and not to change the viability threshold.
Read more about the project here.
In this section you will find relevant information for the consortium partners, such as link, resources, and meetings.
PLS researchers present their latest work at recent conferences PLS researchers Bettine van Willigen and Juliette van Haren recently represented the project at ESPNIC2021 and XXVII European Congress of Perinatal Medicine, and gave presentations about their latest work. Read more here! Arielle, the digital twin The PLS system is being developed to increase chances of
Researchers found spin-off developing ‘incubator 2.0’ Photographer: Juliette van Haren. Research Juliette van Haren MSc, dr. Frank L.M. DelbressinePhotographer: Lyla Kok. Research Juliette van Haren MSc, Dr Frank L.M. DelbressinePhotographer: Lyla Kok. Lifetec Lab, one of the partners in the European PLS consortiumImage Reasearch into the Digital Twin model by Bettine van Willigen, MSc (TU/e)
Get to know Juno! Juno Perinatal Healthcare is a spin-off company of and companion to the PLS project. The startup was founded in July 2021 by engineers Jasmijn and Lyla Kok, medical engineer Beatrijs van der Hout, technician physician dr. Myrthe van der Ven, and Gynecologist prof. dr. Guid Oei. Juno aims to ensure that
PLS Explained: The Animation Explaining how the PLS project works in under 3 minutes is a challenge, but it is possible! This animation shows the PLS mission, the problem that the researchers are taking on, and how they aim to solve it – all in understandable wording. It can be shown to anyone who is
POLIMI at European Conference on Biomedical Optics Caterina Amendola from POLIMI will be speaking at the European Conference on Biomedical Optics! The presentation is on the same topic as their recent paper: Sensitivity of TD-NIRS in Estimating Neonatal Cerebral Hemodynamics with Homogenous Models of Analysis. The conference will take place online, from 20-24 June 2021.
Accuracy of homogeneous models for photon diffusion in estimating neonatal cerebral hemodynamics by TD-NIRS Authors: Amendola, Caterina; Spinelli, Lorenzo; Contini, Davide; De Carli, Agnese; Martinelli, Cesare; Fumagalli, Monica; Torricelli, Alessandro. Abstract: We assessed the accuracy of homogenous (semi-infinite, spherical) photon diffusion models in estimating absolute hemodynamic parameters of the neonatal brain in realistic scenarios (ischemia,
HORIZON 2020
This project is funded by Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union under grant agreement number 863087.
Perinatal Life Support
