Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

Each year, thousands of newborns in Canada are transported by air or ground ambulance to receive specialized medical care. These infants are often premature and especially vulnerable during transport. Vibration exposure during transport may contribute risk of serious long-term consequences including brain injury. To decease risk during transport, specialized equipment is used. However, vibration levels experienced by infants and contributing factors are not well understood. This lack of knowledge affects the ability to transport newborn patients in the safest manner possible. Our goal is to increase the safety of infant transport by reducing vibration exposure. We propose a research program which seeks to understand how vibrations caused by the road and air environments are transferred to the infant. This will allow us to propose novel methods to reduce vibration exposure and improve the equipment for transporting fragile infants. We will measure vibrations in many transport scenarios including within hospitals as well as in ground ambulances, helicopters, and airplanes. The results will be used to develop test equipment and procedures for evaluating the transport equipment. This research will enable better understanding of the problem and provide a reliable way to test the transport equipment and procedures. It will lead to new tools for planning routes that minimize vibration and for monitoring patient vibration. Our research brings together expertise in pediatrics and engineering to study novel solutions to this problem. The team includes engineers from Carleton University and physicians from large childrens hospitals (CHEO in Ottawa, SickKids in Toronto). The physicians represent a provincial committee tasked with providing advice and recommendations to improve safety, quality of care, and the patients and familys experience. This collaboration will ensure that the results are communicated to the clinicians who can impact positive change.