The new infant sensors are soft, flexible and gentler on a baby’s skin, the researchers said.
When tested on premature babies at two hospitals in Chicago, US, the wireless sensors were able to deliver data with accuracy similar to that of standard monitoring systems.
The study, published in the journal Science, initially involved simultaneous use of wireless patches and standard monitoring systems on 20 babies for quantitative comparison.
Later, the researchers expanded testing to more than 70 newborns in the NICU.
