Worldwide, over 6 million neonates do not have access to the necessary phototherapy equipment to treat their moderate-to-severe jaundice due to lack of electricity and the high cost of phototherapy equipment. BiliRoo is a patent-pending novel technology that combines the clinically proven treatments of filtered sunlight phototherapy with kangaroo care – essential prolonged skin-to-skin contact between parent and child – to treat neonatal jaundice in low-resource settings. BilliRoo is non-electric, easy to use and can be manufactured for less than 1/10th the cost of conventional equipment. BiliRoo has been presented at three conferences, we have conducted bench testing, and have obtained user feedback from clinicians in Sub-Saharan Africa. We are closely collaborating with some of the world’s leading scientists and physicians for jaundice and phototherapy in low-resource settings to facilitate clinical trials to demonstrate feasibility, safety, and efficacy.
Our target customers are hospitals in low-resource settings, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia because these places have the most medical need and conveniently also receive the most sun. We will likely begin selling to the hospitals where we do clinical trials and then gradually grow to other hospitals where we have strategic partners at. This is an easy-to-manufacture device and we are researching and networking with established medical device companies to leverage their existing distribution channels and customer bases for our product. BiliRoo is much more cost-effective than other current solutions on the market. For example, in Nigeria, one hospital phototherapy unit costs $2000, and even a considerably cheaper home-based solar-powered machine costs $360 per unit. Our product will be economically sustainable; each sling will cost around $10 to manufacture and $5 dollars to ship, and we plan to sell a sling for under $50.