Texas Hospital Makes History With Wearable Incubator for Preemies. What Nurses Should Know

Image Source: Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital

Imagine giving birth to twins at just 26 weeks and spending nearly two weeks only being able to touch them through the portholes of their incubators. That’s what happened to Houston parents Dorian Ojemen and his wife, OB-GYN Tiffany Ikwuagwu, MD, after welcoming twins Silas and Simone on August 7, 2026, at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, according to hospital officials.

For nearly two weeks, the parents could reach in and touch their babies, but holding them against their chests was another story. Then their NICU team introduced them to something called the Skincubator, a wearable incubator that would allow them to finally experience skin-to-skin care with their premature babies.

Dorian became the first father in Texas to hold his premature twins skin-to-skin using the wearable Skincubator, according to the hospital. Like so many NICU parents, he was nervous. His babies were incredibly small, and he worried about how vulnerable they were. But the opportunity to finally hold them close was something he’d been waiting for.

After more than two decades as a NICU nurse, I’ve stood beside countless parents who have felt exactly that way. They want nothing more than to hold their baby, but they’re terrified of hurting them. When your baby weighs less than two pounds and is connected to respiratory support, IV lines, feeding tubes, and monitors, that fear is completely understandable. Even for experienced NICU nurses, moving an extremely premature infant from an incubator to a parent’s chest requires careful planning, which is why this new technology caught my attention.

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The Skincubator is a wearable incubator designed to attach to a parent’s chest, allowing premature infants to receive skin-to-skin contact while maintaining a warm, humidified environment. It uses a protective enclosure and retractable transfer pad to help position the baby while managing medical lines and tubing. Once the baby is positioned, the pad can be retracted to allow direct skin-to-skin contact.

Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital says it is the first hospital in the United States to introduce the Skincubator into its NICU, as part of a clinical trial. The device is being studied as a way to help premature babies begin skin-to-skin care earlier and stay on a caregiver’s chest longer, including some infants receiving respiratory support.

A 2025 study evaluated 54 paired sessions involving 19 premature infants. Researchers found:

• A smaller temperature drop after transferring infants into the Skincubator (0.2°C, compared with 0.4°C for traditional skin-to-skin care).
• A median of 8.2 minutes spent below the study’s temperature threshold during Skincubator sessions, compared with 27.8 minutes during traditional skin-to-skin sessions.
• No episodes of moderate hypothermia during Skincubator sessions, compared with eight infants experiencing moderate hypothermia during traditional care.

A separate Skincubator 2.0 study included 12 premature infants, 18 parents, and 53 skin-to-skin sessions. Two infants were receiving invasive mechanical ventilation during Skincubator care, and sessions averaged approximately 146 minutes, or nearly two and a half hours. The retractable transfer pad worked in 103 of 106 transfer attempts.

While these findings are promising, the studies were small, and the published research so far comes from the team that invented the device. The lead researcher is the Skincubator’s inventor and a founder of Skincubator Neocare, the company developing it. Larger, independent clinical trials are still needed to determine how the Skincubator performs across different NICU populations and whether it improves long-term outcomes.

Let me be clear: kangaroo care is not a nice extra. It’s a big deal. After nearly 25 years in the NICU, I consider it one of the most powerful interventions we have for premature infants. It’s low-cost, it’s backed by decades of research, and it puts parents at the center of their baby’s care. But for our smallest and sickest babies, something so natural can also be incredibly complicated.

The evidence is hard to ignore. A review in Pediatrics of 124 studies found that among low-birth-weight infants, kangaroo mother care was associated with a 36% reduction in mortality compared with conventional care. The review also found associations with reduced risks of:

• Neonatal sepsis
• Hypothermia
• Hypoglycemia
• Hospital readmission

It was also associated with higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding.

The World Health Organization’s 2022 guidelines go further. They call kangaroo mother care routine care for all preterm and low-birth-weight infants, ideally 8 to 24 hours a day. That is a strong recommendation backed by high-certainty evidence. WHO also now recommends starting it as soon as possible after birth.

That shift was driven largely by a landmark trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine and conducted in five low- and middle-income countries. Infants weighing 1.0 to 1.8 kg who received immediate kangaroo care had a 28-day mortality rate of 12%, compared with 15.7% for infants whose skin-to-skin care was delayed until they were stable. The trial was stopped early because of the survival benefit.

The benefits go beyond survival. A Cochrane review found that skin-to-skin care appears to reduce infants’ pain responses during procedures like heel sticks. Research also links kangaroo care to stronger parent-infant attachment.

Even WHO’s guidance has limits, though. Immediate kangaroo care in facilities can begin before an infant is clinically stable. The exceptions are infants who can’t breathe on their own after resuscitation, are in shock, or need mechanical ventilation. Those are exactly the babies any NICU nurse knows are the hardest to get out of the isolette and onto a parent’s chest. That’s where technology like the Skincubator may have a role.

It’s worth being precise here. These benefits come from research on kangaroo care overall. Larger studies are still needed to determine how much the Skincubator itself improves clinical outcomes.

One of the hardest parts of being a NICU parent is navigating all the equipment. Parents watch every wire, every monitor, and every movement their baby makes. They worry about accidentally pulling out an IV, dislodging a breathing tube, or causing their baby to become unstable.

That fear is well documented. A 2026 scoping review of kangaroo care in NICUs identified parental safety concerns as a barrier to kangaroo care in high-income countries. A review of 25 studies on parents’ experiences found the same tension: parents described kangaroo care as deeply fulfilling, but many also described real hardship in doing it.

I’ve seen it firsthand. Some parents become so nervous during skin-to-skin care that they barely move. Others cut sessions short because they’re afraid of doing something wrong. We reassure them, explain what we’re monitoring, and help them get comfortable, but that fear doesn’t always disappear after the first time they hold their baby.

The Skincubator is designed to address some of those concerns by supporting the infant and helping organize medical equipment during skin-to-skin care. Its developers note that extremely premature infants often don’t get early, prolonged skin-to-skin care, in part because of safety concerns and parental challenges.

In the Skincubator 2.0 study, 18 parents (10 mothers and 8 fathers) rated the safety and convenience of the Skincubator and of traditional skin-to-skin care. Parents reported greater satisfaction with the device on both measures. The study was small though, and it was conducted by the team that invented the device. Independent research will matter.

When parents feel more secure holding their baby, they may feel more comfortable doing longer and more frequent sessions. That matters most for families who have spent days or weeks watching their baby through the walls of an incubator.

Of course, parental comfort doesn’t replace clinical safety protocols. WHO guidance says infants receiving kangaroo care should be secured in a way that keeps the airway open. It also says heart rate, breathing, color, temperature, and oxygen saturation should be monitored. Positioning, airway protection, appropriate monitoring, and trained bedside support remain essential, regardless of the device being used.

Here’s the part that often gets overlooked when we see these heartwarming videos. Moving a 26-week infant from an isolette to a parent’s chest can be a production, especially when the baby is intubated or needs significant respiratory support.

Depending on the baby’s condition, it may take multiple nurses or respiratory therapists to coordinate the transfer. Someone is managing the airway, someone is watching the lines, and someone is helping position the parent while we monitor heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory status, and temperature. All of that happens while we still have other patients who need us.

The research backs up what we feel at the bedside. A systematic review of barriers to kangaroo care among NICU nurses found that nurses cited inadequate space, staffing and equipment shortages, lack of time, and fear of extubating intubated babies or damaging their lines.

For an intubated micro-preemie, those concerns are real. A 2025 Swedish study from a NICU that offers skin-to-skin care as standard practice, even during mechanical ventilation, found that unplanned extubations occurred at a higher rate during skin-to-skin care (10.4 per 100 ventilation days) than during conventional care (3.0), though the skin-to-skin rate fell over the study period. The researchers concluded that safe skin-to-skin care for ventilated infants requires experienced staff and heightened risk awareness among both staff and parents.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. A quality improvement project in a Level IV NICU used an intervention bundle to raise its median from 11 to 55 skin-to-skin holds per month, with no significant change in unplanned extubations. So while we know the benefits of kangaroo care, making it happen safely takes time, adequate staffing, and experienced clinicians.

A device specifically designed around these challenges could potentially help bedside teams by:

• Supporting more controlled transfers between the incubator and caregiver. In a manikin simulation, 20 NICU nurses reported high satisfaction with the safety of the Skincubator’s transfer system (median 5 out of 5), compared with neutral (median 3) for traditional skin-to-skin transfers.
• Helping maintain temperature and humidity during skin-to-skin sessions. Early research found infants had a smaller temperature drop and less time below the temperature threshold than with traditional skin-to-skin care.
• Assisting with the positioning and organization of respiratory tubing and medical lines. Nurses in the simulation study also felt the device reduced infant handling.
• Potentially making longer skin-to-skin sessions more feasible. The Skincubator 2.0 researchers suggest the device may help parents provide more hours of skin-to-skin care, and the Houston trial is measuring daily skin-to-skin time directly.
• Helping parents feel more comfortable participating in care.

These are potential benefits, not proven reductions in nursing workload or adverse events. The simulation study measured nurses’ perceptions using a manikin, not real patients, and all of the published Skincubator research so far is small. No study has yet shown that the device reduces accidental extubations, central-line complications, staffing requirements, or overall nursing workload. Those outcomes deserve further study.

As NICU nurses, we should be excited about innovations that may improve patient care while still asking the hard questions about how they will actually work at the bedside.

The Skincubator is still being evaluated in clinical research and is not yet standard NICU care. In January 2026, the FDA granted the device breakthrough device designation, a program meant to speed review of promising medical devices. That designation is not FDA clearance or approval, and the Houston trial’s registry listing identifies the Skincubator as an unapproved device.

Researchers at UTHealth Houston are conducting a study involving premature infants born between 25 weeks and 30 weeks 6 days of gestation who weighed less than 2,000 grams at birth. The study page lists a target enrollment of 60 infants, with researchers examining daily skin-to-skin duration and parental stress. The listed study period extends through September 2027.

If this technology eventually becomes more widely available, nurses need to be involved in implementation from the beginning. That includes developing clear protocols for infant positioning, airway management, thermoregulation, monitoring, transfers, staff training, and emergency response. We also need to understand how the device would affect workflow and what additional training or resources hospitals would need.

No device replaces a nurse’s clinical judgment, and no piece of technology fixes inadequate staffing. What matters is whether it can safely help us provide more of the evidence-based care we already know our patients need.

I still remember the first micro-preemie I helped place on her mother’s chest many years ago. I remember watching her heart rate settle and seeing her mom finally stop holding her breath. Those are the moments that stay with you.

As NICU nurses, we spend so much time focused on numbers, ventilator settings, medications, and everything else it takes to keep these tiny patients alive. But sometimes the most meaningful thing we can help a family do is something that seems so simple: hold their baby.

For parents like Dorian and Tiffany, technology that makes that moment possible sooner can mean so much more than another piece of equipment. It can mean finally feeling like a parent instead of someone watching from the other side of an incubator.

If the Skincubator can safely help more of our smallest patients experience skin-to-skin care earlier and for longer periods, it’s an innovation worth watching. And as always, NICU nurses need to have a seat at the table as that technology develops.

🤔 NICU nurses: What’s been your biggest challenge when providing skin-to-skin care for extremely premature or medically fragile infants?