A loud neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can have harmful effects on an infant, including a higher risk of hearing impairment and deficits in language, attention, and motor function.
This discovery is what led winners of the 2023 President’s Innovation Prize and Penn bioengineering graduates Tifara Boyce, Gabriela Cano, Gabriella Daltoso, Sophie Ishiwari, and Caroline Magro to create the Sonura Beanie, a device for newborns that filters out harmful noises.
“NICUs can be a surprisingly dangerous auditory environment,” said Daltoso. “Infants are exposed to harmful frequencies for more than 12 hours a day, which is equivalent to an adult hearing a fire alarm go off for that same amount of time, and, as you could imagine, that’s quite stressful.”
While the Sonura Beanie is equipped with an active filtration system to block out high-frequency environmental noise, it still allows low-frequency voices and bodily sounds to pass through. This not only more closely mimics the uterine environment, but also includes a feature that lets parents send voice messages through the beanie.
“We realized it’s hard for parents to be in the NICU daily due to personal, financial, and professional burdens, so the children are missing out on the positive effects of hearing their parents speak and sing to them,” added Daltoso. “Which is why we developed a mobile application that allows the parents to record songs, stories, or audio messages that can be played back in the beanie.”
“It’s great for the patients as the babies may emerge from the NICU with fewer long-term developmental issues, [and] it’s great for the parents because they have the ability to feel a lot more connected to their babies while they’re in NICU,” said Brian Halak, a lecturer in the Engineering Entrepreneurship program who served as a mentor to the Sonura team. “It also improves the quality of care medical professionals can provide.”