NOOMA Pilot

I am standing in a Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital operating room like a pancake, pressed flat against a wall, wedged between a GE warming table and NOOMA, a delayed cord clamping cart I co-designed with my colleagues at Stanford Medicine. We are running a clinical study on the cart for the next three months. I am in blue scrubs, a bouffant cap, shoe covers, and sport a Stanford hospital badge printed in bold with my title: “Neonatology Consultant,” my name, and an overexposed headshot.

To give you some context, our group has been working on this piece of equipment for three years — inspired by the American Academy of Pediatric’s 2017 published recommendation that all babies (full-term or preterm) should receive the benefit of delayed cord clamping. Our device is specifically designed for the preterm infant population, allowing the pediatric team to successfully apply CPAP resuscitation while the baby’s umbilical cord remains attached to her mother’s placenta for at least a full minute. This project and others in our lab have been funded by the Agency For Healthcare Research & Quality. I am one of the designers in our interdisciplinary group and am observing C-section births with our cart.