Containing Pandemics
A Global Issue of Speed, Quality and Safety
SteriDome™ is highly functional and inexpensive life-saving technology will provide the practical means and solutions to save lives, particularly during pandemics and emergencies.
Our patented lightweight, compact, self-contained, multi-functional apparatus. It is a sterile, small, carry-on, collapsible and rapidly deployed apparatus that provides a contained working space for clinical applications to transport, monitor and facilitate treatment for patients.
Portable isolation chambers for contagious patients and operating rooms cost thousands of dollars to maintain and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and furnish.
Even with these precautions, transmission and healthcare-aquired infections due to cross-contamination and exposure to exogenous or endogenous airborne contaminants are still very high.
Providing specific treatment environment is expensive and hard to achieve. These nosocomial infections affect approximately 1.7 million people annually; resulting in an estimated $28-45 billion in annual civilian healthcare costs.
The need for a small, inexpensive and practical solution to properly contain patients while allowing controlled micro-environment treatment is critical.
The application of medication and different therapies without the loss of containment integrity is essential for recovery and the prevention of cross-contamination and transmission to healthcare providers and patients alike.
What is Preterm Birth?
Preterm birth, defined as childbirth occurring at less than 37 completed weeks or 259 days of gestation, is a major determinant of neonatal mortality and morbidity and has long-term adverse consequences for health. Children who are born prematurely have higher rates of cerebral palsy, sensory deficits, learning disabilities and respiratory illnesses compared with children born at term.
Who is Most Affected?
The health complications of preterm infants include inability with regards to breathing, breastfeeding, and maintenance of optimum body temperature. The neonates are also more prone to jaundice, anemia, and other chronic diseases. Preterm births are a serious global social and economical problem with uneven distribution; 12.9 million births, or 9.6% of all births worldwide, were preterm. Approximately 11 million (85%) of these preterm births were concentrated in Africa and Asia, while about 0.5 million occurred in Europe and North America (excluding Mexico) and 0.9 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Where Does it Happen?
The highest rates of preterm birth were in Africa and North America (11.9% and 10.6% of all births, respectively), and the lowest were in Europe (6.2%). Neonatal deaths now account for 40 percent of all deaths under the age of 5 (WHO, UNICEF 2012).
What is The Cost?
The morbidity associated with preterm birth often extends to later life, resulting in enormous physical, psychological and economic costs. Estimates indicate that in 2005 the cost to the United States of America alone in terms of medical and educational expenditure and lost productivity associated with preterm birth were more than US$ 26.2 billion.
Preterm birth generally occurs due to poor prenatal care, maternal age, induced fertility, labor treatments, and lifestyle choices such as obesity and smoking. Hypothermia, asphyxia and jaundice, which cause millions of deaths annually (WHO). They are the leading cause of death among children under 5 years of age, responsible for nearly 1 million deaths in 2013 due to the complications of preterm birth, mostly in the developing world. Preterm births are a serious global problem with uneven distribution.
Every year, an estimated 15 million babies are born preterm. Across 184 countries, the rate of preterm birth ranges from 5% to 18% of babies born. An NICU would provide the greatest clinical benefit to reduce over 35% of children under five who die from neonatal causes
What are The Limitations of Current Incubators?
The development and use of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) saved millions of lives, but neonatal incubators are still larger than necessary and too expensive to meet demand causing less units to be equipped per hospital. The complexity also makes them difficult to transport and to maintain.
An ideal NICU will allow direct access without compromising the internal environment. The portable structure should allow a heat source, oxygen supplementation, fluid level maintenance and be able to sustain high air humidity to prevent dehydration via skin and respiratory evaporation.
Protection from contaminants, noise and temperature change are also critical aspects of NICU isolation. A dynamic, multi-modal NICU will insure that one unit can provide many treatments, such as phototherapy for jaundice. This is why we developed NICI™, our solution to democratizing incubators for the world to dramatically increase access and save lives.
Our Solution
Complete development of a low-cost, highly effective, para-disposable, field-deployable Neonatal ICU providing full containment of the neonate that will reduce the factors causing morbidity and mortality in resource-poor settings.
NICI™ is an easy to use, single-action deployment, light weight NICU apparatus designed to assist treatment for hypothermia, asphyxia and jaundice. It will provide biological containment and utilize simple controls and commercial off the shelf materials to reduce cost. Through our collaboration with several entities such as with Tufts Surgical Research Department, Boston University, Boston Engineering Corporation and the Primer Hospital Popular Garifuna de Honduras, which serves rural regions of Honduras, we plan to implement our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and bring all the necessary functionality and practicality of a hospital-based unit to resource-poor settings globally.
Preterm births result in serious global social and economical problem that affect millions of children annually. Children who are born prematurely experience a serious range of illnesses and disabilities, directly relating to the lack of available NICU. The commercial units are expensive, large, and hard to transport and to maintain. Simple intervention by providing normothermic temperature and humidity, oxygen and light will save millions of newborn lives.
SteriDome™ was designed (patent pending) to be the affordable, field-friendly, sterile, disposable, (potentially reusable), compact NICU that deploys with a single action for use. It is a multi-purpose, fully contained and enclosed microenvironment, accessible with air-locked sleeves and ports for internal manipulation.
This apparatus consolidates several functions, which can be furnished with ease to replace and maintain external hardware to provide neonatal lifesaving services. The system supports oxygen and filtered air for asphyxia, convective or conductive heat and humidity for hypothermia, and light for the treatment of jaundice. The device will weigh less than 2 lbs, and can be deployed and collapsed to the size of 0.15 cubic feet in one motion.
Our technology expected to save thousands of lives per year in resource-poor areas. Once the devices are implemented, it is anticipated that the technology will be practical enough to use several clinical settings, including the treatment or containment for contagious diseases.
The Breegi Scientific Team
Diversity, Good Will & Innovation
Dr. Wisam Breegi
Founder and CEO
Dr. Breegi is founder and chief executive officer of Breegi Scientific and serves on the board of directors. He is an inventor, entrepreneur and human rights activist, with over 25 years of management and diverse preclinical and research experience covering a wide range of medical fields, in addition to extensive clinical expertise. He served as director of in vivo research programs in several biotechnology companies, in addition to working in academic institutions.
Currently, he is teaching as adjunct professor at Endicott College, Boston. His career is built on innovation and social justice for the disadvantaged, stemming from his upbringing and education, with a unique perspective of certain medical issues and challenges. He successfully led preclinical programs in ophthalmology, cancer and gastroenterology, while inventing several methods and devices such as in the field of sustained ophthalmic drug delivery. He is the inventor of SteriDome™, a platform technology for controlled microenvironments.
Dr. Breegi was a National Institute of Health postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University School of Medicine in Gastroenterology. He received his veterinary medicine degree from Baghdad University and was awarded his first patent in 1988. He deeply understands the suffering of people, which reflects in the philosophy of Breegi Scientific, as well as his work.
He has invented several medical devices and published methods. In addition, Dr. Breegi is involved in many humanitarian projects that touched directly thousands of people.
Anh Nguyen
VP and Director of R&D
Mr. Anh Nguyen is a biomedical engineer with over 20 years of product design and medical product development experience. Mr. Nguyen has proven leadership and management skills to define strategies to achieve success in research and development programs. Examples of such activities include managing a disposable endoscopic inspection device where he directed design verification qualifications and process development activities that led to a product worth 500 million dollars.
Mr. Nguyen Directed, design and development activities that led to obtaining proprietary intellectual property and highly successful commercial product currently available on the market for a Novel Baby Bottle Nipple Design for The First Years, Inc. Other successful programs include multi-million dollar percutaneously delivered mitral valve development and novel flow diverting catheter delivered cerebral implants and delivery system.
He is currently the project leader at NewYork–Prebyterian Hospital directing and providing technical assist to in-house engineering staff, technical consultants and consulting companies hired by the hospital, resulting in cost savings related to all medical development programs.
Danny Breegi, BS, MPH
Research and Development
Danny Breegi currently holds a Bachelor of Science in health science and Masters from Boston University's School of Public Health with a concentration in health policy and management. He functions as a researcher in Breegi Scientific, Inc., and brings a passion for developing groundbreaking strategies and methods to solve the most prevalent issues in global health as an active participant in community health initiatives locally and internationally.
Danny's work in Breegi Scientific reflects our���� goals by creating comprehensive solutions for today's most at-risk local and international communities by finding the common flaws of health care throughout the global health landscape.
Dr. Luther Harry Castillo, MD, MPA
Dr. Castillo is a founder of El Primer Hospital Popular de Garifuna, a rural hospital in eastern Honduras serving the Garifuna ethnic communty. He wrote the current public health policy of Honduras and is currently pioneering alternative healthcare models for low-resource communities, such as his native Garifuna ethnic tribe. A Harvard Kennedy School alumnus, Dr. Castillo is one of the most active public health officials in Central and Latin America, and splits his time between attending academic events around North and Latin America, and spending the remainder of his time in rural Honduras developing his clinics. With Dr. Castillo's support, we conducted a needs assessment of neonatal and infant care across Honduras, and we plan to test our incubator there in 2016.
Dr. Danstan Bagenda, MSc, PhD
Dr. Bagenda is currently an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska College of Public Health, and also works at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, specializing in HIV/AIDS research, modeling approaches, data informatics, monitoring, evaluation, and continuum of care in underserved and low-resource populations. He is a pioneer member in global HIV/AIDs control measures, most recently working for the Harvard School of Public Health as a strategic information and M&E advisor, with a background in epidemiology and biostatistics from Johns Hopkins, University of Washington, Oxford University and the University of London. Dr. Bagenda has been published in 32 academic papers and is a member of the American Statistical Association, a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in the UK and a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Rebecca Love RN, MSN, FIEL
Master in Eng in Biomedical Engineering with Engineering Practice from Boston University, BS in Biomedical Engineering, concentration in nanotechnology, from Boston University
Role: R&D, Engineering
Background:
Master’s project with NICU at Boston Medical Center
Skin tissue engineering research at Harvard Medical School/Brigham & Women’s
Public health project at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center (abstract publication)
2014-2015 President of Boston University Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Team
Alejandra Cambonchi
- BS in Biomedical Engineering and Concentration in Nanotechnology from Boston University
Role: Engineering and Grant Research
Background:
Experience working in laboratory and clinical settings.
Interests include public and global health.
Andria Ronne
BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University
Role: Strategy and Engineering
Background:
Founder of a Global Health startup at Cornell
Experience working in the orthopedic medical device industry and at a financial software company.
Interests include global health, medical devices, education, and dance.
Ruohan Wang
- M.S Management Studies, Boston University Questrom School of Business
B.S Biomedical Engineering concentration in Nanotechnology, Boston University
Role
Business Development
Background
Management Consulting with Quintiles Advisory Services and The Paint Bar
Research in stem cell engineering in Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology
Board of Directors
Wisam Breegi, DVM
Mr. Anh Nguyen
Mr. Clair Strohl
AlWalid ElBermani, MD
Peter Gollub, DVM, JD
Advisory Board:
Jason Walsh, MBA
Mr. Clair Strohl, MSc
Dr. Luther C. Harry, MD. MPH
Mr. Bob Sykes
Danstan Bagenda, Ph.D.
Dr. AlWalid ElBermani, Tufts University School of Medicine
