Embrace has partnered with GE to distribute the Infant Warmer to rural areas and has gone into production in 2011. GE Healthcare-Embrace distributed infant warmers in Rural India in early 2011. A clinical study in India showed the infant warmer was used on infants weighing as little as 3.5 pounds and was successful in maintaining body temperature. More information on GE's Maternal Infant Care portfolio for products serving low-resource health care settings can be found here.
The Embrace Infant Warmer will have a retail price of $200.
In addition to their existing 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Embrace is launching a separate, for-profit social enterprise – Embrace Innovations (a C Corporation), which will be responsible for the manufacture, distribution and sales of their Infant Warmer. Embrace Innovations will also conduct research and development to create new low-cost maternal and child health innovations for the developing world.
• Launched first product – the Embrace Infant Warmer called the Embrace (TM) Nest– and providing medical support to more than 300 babies in rural India.
• Successfully completing a rigorous multi-center clinical study and receiving International Standards Organization (ISO) 13485 certification.
• Placed first in the McKinsey Social Innovation Video Contest and winning the People's Choice Award for the INDEX competition, the world’s most prestigious design contest.
Embrace is a low-cost warmer that costs less than 1% of traditional incubators. It has been designed to save premature and low birth weight babies in the developing world. The device requires little to no electricity, has no moving parts, is portable, easy to clean and is safe and intuitive to use. Embrace aims to help the 20 million vulnerable babies born every year around the world, who are unable to access traditional incubators that cost up to $20,000.
The warmer is a small sleeping bag design that provides infants with constant heat (98.6F or 37C) for 4 to 6 hours at a time to assist them in maintaining a normal temperature.
The system is comprised of three main components: a pouch made up of a heat-storing phase-change material (PCM); an electric heater that does not come in contact with the baby and heats the pouch to approximately 37° C; and a sleeping bag that holds the infant and the pouch in separate compartments to promote sustained warming of the infant.
Embrace initially has launched its first product in India and roll to the rest of the world at a later stage.
Embrace has been featured in National Geographic, ABC News on Be the Change Save a Life, DotMed, and UK SkyNews.
Please see the Embrace news page for more updates.
