Preemie | Human milk analysis and fortification for LBW infants

Optimising Baby's Health

Preemie is the first system that performs automatic
and reliable human milk analyses and personalises
milk fortification for low birth weight infants

Solving infants’ Undernourishment through precise human milk analysis and fortification

To grow as they should, low birth weight (LBW) infants typically need more nutrition than is provided by their mother’s milk, so the milk needs to be fortified to avoid undernourishment. Human milk is important because infant formula is missing the unique class of nutritional fibre called human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), which are critical to the proper development of the infant’s immune system and microbiome.

Since both infant’s needs and mother’s milk vary over time, the only way to ensure adequate nourishment is to analyse the milk for its unique composition, and provide target fortification by adding the missing quantities of each macronutrient.

Preemie is a system that reliably measures human milk composition and automatically suggests the fortification of the milk tested, based on the infant’s necessities. The system is also able to correlate the growth of the infant with the detailed nourishment given.

20m

–

newborns globally have low birth weight. This is 15% of total births.

15m

–

infants are born preterm every year. This is 11% of total births.

58%

–

of preterm infants are undernourished and experience post-natal growth restriction.

€21bn

–

is the estimated annual cost of preterm birth in Europe alone.

The complete solution to Target
Nutrition of Low Birth Weight Infants

The Preemie system is based on a Near-InfraRed spectroscopic sensor able to test small samples of human mothers’ milk. The information acquired is then processed by an Artificial Intelligence engine working in the cloud and the results are delivered to the user via a dedicated mobile application. Preemie measures human milk’s key parameters. Preemie also measures the level of milk spoilage, a critical value for the assessment of human milk in milk banks.

The healthcare provider can choose among international guidelines for human milk fortification, or set customised needs. Preemie takes into account the composition of the fortifiers available in the market and provides automatic calculation of the amount of fortifiers to be added at each feeding. The software also keeps track of the feedings via a web-based dashboard, enabling correlation with each infant’s growth.

Preemie’s Clients

Preemie allows Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) to quickly analyse milk at each feeding and evaluate the fortification needed to meet each infant’s needs, correlating the current intake and the babie’s growth over time. Human milk banks will be able to test and select the donor milk based on level of spoilage. They can also choose the milk to be pooled to obtain the most balanced nutritional composition for infant patients. In addition, the system enables mothers to test milk for nutritional value, and together with a healthcare provider, perform fortification and find possible dietary changes to meet the infant’s needs.

NICUs

Neonatal Intensive Care Units can use Preemie to quickly analyse milk at each feeding and evaluate the fortification needed for each infant. Preemie also keeps track of the baby’s nutritional intake and growth over time.

Question: How can I fortify milk to meet the needs of a specific infant?

Solution: Test the milk’s nutritional value with Preemie, and either select one of the international guidelines for fortification or enter customised requirements.

Action: Fortify the milk according to the app’s automatic calculation of the types and amounts of standard fortifiers needed.

HUMAN MILK BANKS

With Preemie, milk bank operators will be able to test donor milk for freshness. This allows setting criteria for whether each donation is to be used.

Question: How can we assess the freshness of the donor milk received?

Solution: Preemie is able to determine donor milk spoilage in seconds.

Action: Make informed decisions about what milk to pool and send to NICUs.

MOTHERS

Preemie provides valuable information on the nutritional properties of mother’s milk, enabling her to consult with specialists to potentially introduce dietary changes or fortify the baby’s nutrition.

Question: How do I make sure that my milk is nutritionally strong?

Solution: Use Preemie to test milk and evaluate its nutritional value.

Action: Consider dietary changes with the support of an expert.

Preemie’s Features

COMPLETE AUTOMATED PROCESS

Preemie not only analyses milk’s composition, but also automatically calculates the amount of fortification needed based on international guidelines and fortifiers available in the market. This removes human error from the calculations.

RELIABLE

Being designed around human milk’s unique features, Preemie uses Artificial Intelligence to extract complex patterns from large volumes of data. This removes human biases from the process.

TIME SAVING

Preemie is very fast: the entire human milk analysis procedure takes a few minutes, and the system calculates in real-time all the data needed to immediately execute the fortification of the milk.

AFFORDABLE

Preemie is sold at an affordable price, plus a low annual subscription fee after the first year. This is due to the low cost of the most recent NIR sensors and to the analyses being executed in the cloud, reducing hardware needs and related costs.

SCALABLE

Preemie is based on a highly flexible technology that runs in the cloud, which easily handles more users, and can add new features and detection of new parameters without any changes to the hardware or to the app.

HUMAN MILK TRACEABILITY

Preemie uses blockchain technology to trace all the relevant information about the milk, preventing any attempt to alter or delete such data. This allows NICUs and milk banks to track the authenticity and the history of the milk received all the way to its origin.

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