A low-cost, portable incubator for premature babies has won the James Dyson award for design engineer students. “mOm” is designed specifically for use in refugee camps and other deprived settings.

Designer James Roberts began work on the project after watching a documentary about refugee camps. He says around 150,000 children are born in camps every year, of which an estimated 27,500 die from a lack of incubation. With current models costing as much as US$50,000 and being very bulky, traditional incubators are not really a practical option for camps.

Roberts began by breaking down the operation of an incubator and pared it down to a few must-have features: a stable heat environment, humidification and phototherapy (to treat jaundice.)

He came up with the idea of making only the two ends of the unit from solid materials. The sides are made from inflatable PVC ribbing, some of which is transparent; when the sides are deflated, the two ends clip together to form a case that houses all the other parts.

Not only does this set-up make the incubator smaller, lighter and cheaper (around US$400), but the PVC is easy to sterilize before reuse

The incubator is controlled by an Arduino computer, which operates and regulates a ceramic element, a light, a display showing the current temperature and humidity, and an alarm that sounds if either of these levels get out of hand. The set-up uses a relatively small amount of power so, as well as running from a regular electric outlet, it can run from a car battery for more than 24 hours without recharging.

A doctor interviewed by the BBC said the design did a good job of performing basic incubator functions in challenging circumstances, though noted it would only be suitable for babies born a little early, unlike hospital units that can support severely premature babies.