Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center became the first site activated to enroll patients into the Baby TAPE study this week.

Weight is the foremost marker of health and health outcomes in infants. For infants receiving care in a neonatal intensive care unit, however, it can be nearly impossible to remove or account for the weight of life-sustaining medical equipment prior to obtaining a scale-based weight. The relative error introduced by such equipment can significantly affect the safety profile of the medicines these infants receive.

The Baby TAPE study will collect the necessary anthropometric data on children under the age of 3 months with the eventual goal of developing, designing, and validating a weight estimation tool for newborns and young infants. Anthropometric data on length and girth surrogates will be collected in 2000 infants at approximately 5–10 study sites.