Future of Engineering

Preemies need quiet so they can learn their mother's voice and their brains can figure out how to process sound, things that normally happen in the last trimester before birth."It's definitely a great idea," Dr. Bob White, a neonatologist at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Ind., said of the monitoring system in Riley's neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.

Neonatal Sound Monitoring system inventor Chris Smith hopes doctors nationwide agree with White. He has sold his Sonicu system to several Indiana hospitals and wants to expand nationally.

Babies born too soon lose the muffling effect of the womb before their ears can filter sound, White said. NICUs are rife with noise from employees, equipment and excited relatives.Smith, a former car mechanic who tinkered in radio and TV electronics in high school, filled hours of spare time researching sound standards and building a system. He hired an acoustical engineer to help. They created a ceiling-mounted system of microphones that pick up sound and funnel data to a large control panel.

The latest version of Sonicu can feed sound and light data to a computer. It turns on the warning lights and can quickly dim the lighting in a room that gets too noisy.It can also make lighting mimic the sun by brightening it toward noon and then fading it, which also helps babies sleep well. White said he knows of no other NICU monitoring system that sophisticated.

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