Bill Horan
Bill Horan
Creative | UX | Product Design
Faster, easier newborn screening
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Baebies has a vision: to make critical blood screening for infants available to caregivers around the world at relatively low cost — with results in hours, not days.

The extra “e” in Baebies stands for “everyone,” reflecting a vision of universally available rapid medical screening. But shifting a lab procedure to non-lab environments demanded an approachable device with a more intuitive workflow. That meant going to the infant wards and NICUs where the device would live, and learning from the experts themselves.

We interviewed lab technicians and phlebotomists to learn the details of screening, then shadowed neonatal nurse practitioners at hospitals of varying sizes. We also talked with department heads, to understand how test results feed into existing information systems.

Next we created 2 journey maps - one that reflected the realities of the workflows we observed, and another that imagined how the workflows might work with the baebies system in place.

 
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We then mapped physical activities and interactions with the device and environment in parallel with the digital interface workflows that would support them.

Because users would be nurses rather than lab techs, the interface walked users through the process with clear instructions and illustrations.

 

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Our research and workflows informed a series of form and interaction concepts, which we prototyped and tested with hospital staff.

The resulting instrument, called FINDER, is friendly and gentle enough to sit unobtrusively in a neonatal ward, and its iconic appearance features prominently in the touchscreen visuals, matching the physical and virtual interfaces to make every step unmistakable.

Baebies Finder received a CE Mark in late 2019 and is now available in Europe and other countries that recognize this mark.

Currently the device is undergoing a clinical trials in the U.S. for FDA clearance.

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