Embrace Infant Warmer
Technological innovation has the power to save lives by creating access to proper care in underserved regions.
The Embrace Infant Warmer is an affordable, portable and safe device that can reduce infant deaths from hypothermia. Developed in an Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability course at Stanford University, the device’s technology bundles a sleeping bag with a warming pack and heater. By using a reverse-innovation design approach, and working with local teams in the field, the design was tested and refined.
GE has partnered with Embrace to distribute the Infant Warmer in rural areas around the globe. In a clinical study conducted in India, a country where nearly one third of the world’s infant deaths occur, the Embrace product was used to care for infants weighing as few as 1.6 kilograms (or 3.5 pounds).
“It performed beautifully,” said Jane Chen, co-founder and CEO of Embrace. “The device performed exactly how it’s supposed to by helping to maintain the baby’s body temperature.”
The Embrace Infant Warmer has three components: a sleeping bag, a sealed pouch of phase-change material and a heater. The sleeping bag swaddles the child while the heater warms the pouch, located in an adjacent compartment. Its design is intuitive, versatile, can be deployed to remote locations, and promotes close interactions between mother and child.
Beyond its mobility and ease of use, the Embrace Infant Warmer promotes access to infant care through its affordability: a retail price under $200, compared with up to $5,000 for a traditional warmer.
Embrace is now a member of GE’s Maternal Infant Care portfolio of Lullaby products, which serve low-resourced healthcare settings. Embrace goes into production in the second half of 2011.











