Incubators that save lives

The in3ator incubator, designed by the engineer and entrepreneur Pablo Sánchez Bergasa, has helped more than 4,000 newborns in countries with fewer resources. On November 5, he gave a talk in the Tecnun auditorium , organized by the CM Jaizkibel.

On November 5, the engineer and entrepreneur, Pablo Sánchez Bergasa, shared his experience and learnings in his NGO Medical Open World, promoter of in3ator, a low-cost neonatal incubator for hospitals with fewer resources. The colloquium organized by the high school Mayor Jaizkibel brought together more than 130 students.

 
This project to transform society has its roots in the passion for electronics that Sánchez Bergasa cultivated since he was a child. In his speech, he shared some of his first projects - from assembling a remote-controlled toy to tinkering with his grandfather's car - and how those attempts, with their failures, nurtured a passion that would become a vocation of service to those most in need.

It was in 2017 when the young engineer, award Princess of Girona Social 2025, joined the cardboard incubator project driven by the then student of Engineering in Madrid, Alejandro Escario. In front of the students of Tecnun, Sánchez Bergasa acknowledged that "the main problem with this incubator was that, being made of cardboard, it presented several challenges that made it less valid, such as the accumulation of bacteria."

His main contribution was to design an incubator that, in his words, "heats and humidifies to prevent babies from expending too much energy in the early stages of their development and, in addition, thanks to LEDs, prevents jaundice". He explained to the students how this project took up four years of his free time, full of doubts and uncertainties.

One of the first incubators they transported arrived at a hospital where a baby weighing only 500 grams had been born. In the absence of alternatives, and given that the baby's life expectancy was very leave, they decided to test the device.

The engineer was able to connect remotely thanks to the Internet connection he had built into the incubator and was thrilled to see the first real-time usage data . "Eight months later the child survived, and we traveled to meet his mother, who kept thanking us that we had saved the life of her first child."

Over the years, Medical Open World has managed to send 230 incubators to 37 countries, and they estimate that more than 4,000 newborns have passed through them. Pablo Sanchez recognizes that "this would never have been possible without the financial aid of his family, the Salesians and other 60 NGOs that have contributed to the project". In this sense, on leaving the auditorium, in an informal conversation with some Tecnun students, he referred to the movie The Prince of Egypt to remind them that the cima of the pyramid is not more important than the base that supports it.

With this experience, Sánchez Bergasa learned to transform his free time and his knowledge of electronics into an opportunity to help the most disadvantaged. In conclusion, he encouraged them to dream about these initiatives, to tell each other about them and to embark on the adventure with hope.

 
At the end of Pablo Sánchez Bergasa's talk there was a colloquium moderated by student Teresa Galán in which several Tecnun students took part.