Barry Lester, PhD, Director of the Center for the Study of Children at Risk at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, is developing a handheld device that uses a cloud-based algorithm to determine if the cries of an infant with prenatal opioid exposure meet the criteria for Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). Dr. Lester is a recipient of support through the Brown Biomedical Innovation to Impact fund (2020). 

Peter O’Neill, a serial entrepreneur most recently Executive Director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations and former CEO of Custom Orthopaedic Solutions, describes his view on Lester’s innovation: "This technology applies machine learning algorithms to analyze audio information from baby cry that is not discernable to the human ear, resulting in a powerful diagnostic tool."