Othello physician develops app to help treat infant jaundice
Courtesy photo Dr. Mengyi Zha was part of a team that developed a new app designed to help medical professionals improve their treatment of jaundice in newborns.
OTHELLO — A Columbia Basin Health Association physician has developed a phone app designed to help medical professionals treat a disease that can cause serious health problems for newborns.
The “BiliStop” app developed by Dr. Mengyi Zha and her business partner, Dr. Dennis Costakos, helps treat jaundice in neonates.
Zha is a family medicine physician at CBHA, whose practice includes obstetrics. Jaundice can be an issue for newborn babies, and if left untreated can cause serious complications. In the case of newborns, those can include permanent neurological damage, Zha said.
In some cases “it’s really hard to spot it (jaundice),” Zha said. To combat that, every baby is checked for bilirubins, which are indicators of liver function.
There are effective treatments for infant jaundice, including exposure to light. But sometimes it’s difficult to tell when to stop the light treatments, Zha said. Too much treatment also can result in side effects, some of them serious, and it’s hard on babies and families, both emotionally and financially.
A large study done in 2017 developed a formula that doctors could use to tell when to stop treatment. “This formula, we feel it should be a standard of care. Unfortunately it’s not,” Zha said.
It’s a pretty complicated formula and takes a while to calculate. The author of the 2017 study suggested that an app would be a good idea.
Zha and Costakos took that to heart. “She called for the app, so we’re going to make one,” Zha said.
Their research started in 2019. The research team included Zha, Costakos and nurse Lynn Dahlen, and they worked with about 30 medical providers during development. “It’s a couple of years of work altogether,” Zha said.
The result was BiliStop, which became available in June. The BiliStop app has proven to be user-friendly, faster than calculating by hand and more accurate, Zha said. It’s available in major app stores and on the company’s website, Evergreen Bioinformatics.
The company’s name was derived from the doctors’ medical school alma mater, Dartmouth. Costakos is a physician at Mayo Clinic, where Zha did her medical residency.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columibabasinherald.com.