Wednesday 30 November 2016

Presenter Anne-Marie Tomchak, UK editor of Mashable, returned home to Ireland determined to explore a world where our digital fingerprints are being captured and applied in all areas of modern life.

Cloud Control

In INFANT, she met with our directors Prof. Louise Kenny and Prof. Geraldine Boylan to explore how INFANT uses big data to help make pregnancy safer and improve health outcomes for newborn babies, under the strictest data security.

Louise Kenny in the INFANT lab

INFANT technology, Prof. Kenny notes, is advancing how we protect women during pregnancy “from being only able to predict risk using very simple clinical data to real precision medicine”, where one blood sample can predict “a woman’s entire pregnancy course.”

Infant Centre's Geraldine Boylan in the NICU

Asked how technology and data help us learn about childbirth, Prof. Boylan explains that the brainwave analysis tools being developed by INFANT researchers are vital as they give us “the only window we have into the newborn brain”.