Premature babies enter the world before many of their biological systems are ready, yet the technologies that keep them alive often separate them from their parents. Alon Metrikin-Gold, founder and CEO of NEOCare, is working to redesign neonatal care around connection.
His team developed SKINcubator, a wearable medical device intended to enable immediate and prolonged skin-to-skin care for premature and medically fragile infants. The device maintains warmth and humidity while securing the baby and supporting the lines and tubes required in intensive care.
In this episode, we explore why separation is not a neutral baseline, how physical contact affects stress regulation and development, and why parents should be treated as part of the clinical care team.
00:00 - Introduction to Skincubator Neocare and the problem of prolonged skin-to-skin care
01:11 - Alon’s background in women’s health and medical anthropology
03:03 - The key insight: separation is the artificial state
04:45 - WHO guidance versus actual NICU practice
06:14 - What parents and nurses revealed about failed skin-to-skin care
07:49 - Why extremely premature babies are so fragile
09:46 - The early engineering idea: heat and humidity from the parent’s body
10:43 - Six core design requirements for the first week of life
11:42 - What “transfer” means in practice and why it is so stressful
13:07 - Line safety, hypothermia, and why short sessions still fail
14:32 - How the device maintains heat, humidity, safety, and access
15:02 - Early clinical results and hours of skin-to-skin care achieved
16:19 - Target population and why the first days of life matter most
17:15 - Why NICU care often leaves parents unsure of their role
18:12 - How the broader system is built around separation
19:10 - Why skin-to-skin care is not just “nice,” but medically significant
21:06 - Human connection as something technology should support, not replace
22:04 - FDA breakthrough designation and what it means
23:32 - Why better documentation of skin-to-skin care matters
24:31 - How the device becomes a catalyst for protocol change
26:35 - The biology of stress reduction, cortisol, and stabilization
28:03 - Skin-to-skin care as preventative medicine and neurodevelopment support
30:28 - Maternal and infant benefits, including feeding and sensory regulation
31:25 - Designing as a producer, not an engineer, and listening to nurses
32:47 - Building for two user groups at once: parents and nurses
34:44 - How aesthetics, regulation, business model, and manufacturing all connect
36:29 - Funding the company with angels and seed capital
37:25 - Clinical expansion plans in Europe, Germany, Canada, Poland, Australia, and the US
38:10 - Safety, feasibility, and randomized trials focused on increased contact time
39:34 - Future outcome studies: baby, parent, nurse, hospital, and ROI measures
41:50 - The long-term roadmap: connected care from delivery to discharge
43:48 - Quantifying skin-to-skin barriers and the challenge of measurement
44:46 - Why parents occupy both patient and labor roles in the NICU
46:36 - Three strategic arcs: discharge, parent engagement, and low-resource settings
47:14 - Parenting, stress, and the emotional reality of the NICU
49:32 - Reimbursement, leave policies, and institutional barriers for families
55:13 - Advice for medical device founders: solve the problem, not the idea
56:42 - Why medical devices require technology, regulatory, and business model alignment
57:30 - Collecting data early to validate the next step
58:59 - Alon’s science fiction and urban fantasy recommendation
