Premie Breathe by Allen Wilson at Coroflot.com

Premie Breathe

Premie Breathe from Allen Wilson

Premie Breathe

Premie Breathe — STARS

Situation
Respiratory distress in premature infants requires accessible, low-cost support systems, especially in low-resource settings.

Task
Develop a viable product concept balancing thermal performance, usability, and cost for global health deployment.

Action
Led concept development and advanced selected direction based on heating performance, intuitive interaction, and COTS cost constraints; aligned form, system layout, and usability with engineering inputs.

Result
Delivered a concept supporting continued development and contributing to the formation of Aero Therapeutics, advancing toward commercialization.

Sync
Early-stage medical device design integrating usability, cost constraints, and system-level thinking.

A Yale student project that gained attention from the World Health Organization.
Credit to co-designer Tai Geng for renders and detailed concept development; Concept 2 was selected for meeting heating, UX, and COTS cost requirements.

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PROJECT CONTEXT & IMPACT Respiratory distress is a leading cause of death in premature infants, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where access to advanced respiratory support is limited. This work aligns with a Yale School of Public Health initiative focused on developing accessible neonatal respiratory solutions. Premie Breathe was part of a broader effort to create a system that warms, oxygenates, and sterilizes delivered air at significantly lower cost than traditional devices, enabling potential use in resource-constrained clinical environments. This initiative has since progressed beyond early research and concept development, contributing to the formation of Aero Therapeutics, a company advancing neonatal respiratory technology toward real-world deployment and global accessibility.

Anjelica Gonzalez, the Donna L. Dubinsky Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, recently spoke to the World Health Organization (WHO) about PremieBreathe – a breathing aid for premature infants created at Yale.