The Small, High-Tech Beanie Protecting Premature Babies

Tiny ears need extra protection…and extra TLC. Premature babies often spend their first days in a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, full of breathing machines beeping, pages coming over the loudspeaker, doors opening and closing, and other bothersome noises. It’s a far cry from the cozy, muffled environment of the uterus, which keeps full-term babies from too-loud sounds.

Without the protection of the uterine lining, babies whose brains and bodies are weeks from developing to the level of a full-term newborn, are exposed to sounds that are medically too loud. Beeps and alarms alone in the hospital measure at roughly 2,000 Hertz; that’s four times the level of noise fetuses in the womb hear (500 Hertz), according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Ventilators can emit sounds up to 8,000 Hertz. And while some outside noises are muffled for babies in incubators, others, like CPAP machines and other devices inside the incubator, are magnified.

This noise, and the stress it directly induces, can cause a host of problems for preemies: Their heart rates are higher, they sleep poorly, they don’t eat as much, and they have higher rates of language delays.

How to solve this pervasive and persistent problem? Enter a small but high-tech beanie.

Gabby Daltoso (BE’25), at left, and Sophie Ishiwari (BE’25), at right, created a hat for premature babies which blocks out high-frequency sounds and can also play messages from their parents. (Credit: Penn Medicine)

Developing a safe sound device

Sophie Ishiwari and Gabby Daltoso, two 2025 graduates of Penn Engineering, created a hat for premature babies which blocks out high-frequency sounds and can also play messages from their parents. They named the device the Sonura Beanie, with “sonura” coming from the Latin word for sound. Any audio the beanie plays goes through an audio filter that blocks high frequencies, which brings it under the 500-Hertz threshold, in line with what babies can safely hear. For their innovative idea, field-tested at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), the two earned the President’s Innovation Prize from University of Pennsylvania President.

“Gabby and I spent a lot of time shadowing and talking to nurses, clinicians, and staff in the Intensive Care Nursery at HUP as well as parents to develop something that could make a true difference,” said Ishiwari. “We received input from hundreds of people.”

“What stuck out to us was the fragility of these babies and the moms, dads, and care providers all striving to bring the babies to a healthy place,” said Daltoso. “We wanted to help.”

Read More at Penn Medicine

Topmost picture: Pamela Collins holds her son, John, as he wears the Sonura Beanie. (Credit: Penn Medicine)