Neonatal jaundice screening with variable screening thresholds using a smartphone and a transcutaneous bilirubinometer

The neoSCB app is a smartphone app in development that can screen newborn babies for "significant jaundice", defined as total serum bilirubin (TSB)> 250 μmol/L, which is the screening threshold for newborn babies older than 24 hours as recommended by the NICE Clinical Guidelines (No. 98). Babies with significant jaundice should be referred for a confirmatory blood test to determine if treatment is necessary. In this work, we investigated whether the neoSCB app could also be applied to screen newborn babies with lower screening thresholds, which may be applicable to those younger than 24 hours. As a comparison, we also investigated the accuracy of a widely adopted transcutaneous bilirubinometer (Drager JM105) in the same group of babies. Our results show that for screening thresholds between 100 and 250 μmol/L, the sensitivities were above 0.85 and specificities above 0.70 for both the neoSCB app and JM105, showing the potential of using the two devices in newborns younger than 24 hours.