Comparison of the mOm Incubator With a Standard Incubator for the Maintenance of Thermal Stability in Preterm Infants With User Feedback

Investigators will recruit babies who are in the Neonatal Unit at St. Peter's Hospital. Babies will be clinically stable from a cardio-respiratory point of view. They will also be requiring incubator care (so they will weigh less than approximately 1400g) but not requiring additional humidification. This effectively excludes babies born less than 30 weeks gestation who are routinely humidified for the first week (if 28-30 weeks gestation) or two weeks (if less than 28 weeks gestation). Some term babies may also be eligible for the study if they are being nursed in an incubator for clinical reasons.

Identification and recruitment of babies will be carried out by the attending Consultant Neonatologist and the research team.

For twins, consecutive enrolment will be possible if only one mOm incubator is available.

There will be two arms to the protocol. The first arm will consist of standard incubator care, where the care of the baby is unchanged, but non-invasive, more frequent (hourly) temperature and other physiological measures of stability than would normally be collected in routine care (nominally every three hours) will be collected. The second arm will be the baby receiving normal care in the mOm incubator, with another set of hourly detailed, non-invasive, observations. The planned care and monitoring of the baby will be otherwise unchanged. No additional blood tests or any other invasive testing or monitoring are required. The clinical team will have full control and responsibility for the baby's care and can terminate the study for the baby at any time for any reason.

In addition, investigators will collect the views of staff on the baby's comfort, visibility, care, usability and acceptability during each arm of the study.