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Aim

Improving the care and health outcomes of newborn infants utilising large datasets, interventional clinical trials and new technologies.

Lead – Professor Shalini Ojha

Professor Ojha is Clinical Professor of Neonatology, her neonatal research is at the University of Nottingham and clinically she is a neonatologist at the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton.  Her research interests focuses on improving the care of babies who need specialist care. She has a special interest in neonatal nutrition with focus on clinical studies that evaluate the optimal ways of milk feeding in preterm infants. She leads on clinical trials, large database analyses, and implementation and evaluation of complex interventions that aim to improve outcomes in preterm and sick babies. Currently, she is the chief investigator on the NIHR HTA funded FEED-1 Trial, a randomised controlled trial investigating the best way to feed babies born 8-10 weeks early, recruiting in 46 UK hospitals.

Research Focus

  1. Neonatal transport. Centralisation of neonatal intensive care requires the support of a highly specialised neonatal transport teams.  These teams are crucial for the care of high-risk infants but little research has focused on the safety and outcomes of these inter-hospital transfers.  We have an extensive research programme addressing this with access to a unique neonatal critical care transport ambulance, fully equipped neonatal transport incubator and a range of monitoring equipment from noise, vibration, near infra-red spectroscopy and video analyses. Our research also explores the impact of service configuration and how changes to this could improve outcomes.

  2. Healthcare Technologies. Our team at CePR have developed many different MedTech innovations specifically for the perinatal period.  For example, we have developed the NeoRate App (available on Android and iOS), two commercially available vital signs monitors for Fetal ECG and Newborn care.  We are part of the NIHR Children and Young People MedTech Cooperative with the CePR Director Prof Sharkey the neonatal technologies theme lead. We have also developed the Preterm Outcome Dashboard (POD) which is part of a project to use artificial intelligence to predict preterm outcomes.  ***(For this could we have a picture of the POD logo and if they click on it then it links them with the web address https://premoutcome.github.io/

  3. Nutrition. We aim to optimise nutrition in newborn babies with large randomised controlled trials that investigate the effectiveness of nutritional interventions; evaluation of complex interventions by mixed-methods research; and exploring nutritional practices and outcomes using large databases.

  4. Outcomes of high-risk infants (esp. respiratory disease). Using large database and designing and delivering clinical trials to optimise the care of babies who need respiratory support.  We also explore longer term respiratory outcomes, with academic paediatric respiratory clinicians as part of CePR, using novel technologies and research focused MRI.

  5. Developmental outcomes and education. Investigating cost-effective and feasible ways of conducting long-term neurodevelopmental follow up of those born-preterm.  We are exploring ways of using technology and artificial intelligence to try and identify infants at risk of movement disorders before they are diagnosed clinically.