When Babies Come First: Inside Our Partnership with Phoenix Medical Systems
Updated: 1 hour ago
By Melody Westen, CEO, Embrace Global
Every Embrace Warmer starts its journey at Phoenix Medical Systems in Chennai, India. Phoenix has been manufacturing our devices alongside their traditional incubators and other neonatal technologies since 2017. This partnership is key to our ability to scale. Our relationship with Phoenix works because it is built on shared values and a purpose-driven leader who only wants the best for babies everywhere. Today, we would like to introduce you to that leader, V. Sashi Kumar.
In 1988, Sashi was an engineering student when his professor sent him to a hospital in Chennai to help with its incubators. What he found there is still all too common. A room full of imported incubators sat broken, and replacement parts could not be brought in to repair them. Babies needed warmth, and there was no working equipment to provide it.
"In the late 1980s, my professor sent me to the Child's Trust Hospital in Chennai. It was the first time I had seen such tiny newborns, many of them kept warm only under incandescent lamps, while imported incubators sat broken in a side room. Spares had to be imported under license, so they couldn't be repaired. As an electronics engineer, I found the power supplies had failed and got them working again with locally sourced components. Seeing the hope on the doctors' faces, I asked myself: why not build one here? I made it my post-graduate project, and 12 months later I had a working prototype."
A Company Built Around One Idea
India records more premature births than any other country, over 20% of the global total. For babies born too soon, staying warm is a matter of survival. Hypothermia is a leading preventable contributor to newborn deaths, even in warm climates.
Sashi has a way of bringing every conversation back to the same place. "We are doing this for the babies." I have heard him say it more times than I can count, and I have watched it guide decisions across his company.
Where the Embrace Warmer is Made
Every Embrace Warmer is built by Phoenix. It is built by a team led by engineers.
Phoenix continues to build neonatal and maternal care equipment for more than 10,000 hospitals in over 60 countries. Its roots are in India, which has more premature births than any other country in the world. Every Embrace Nest is built by engineers to the same international medical standards as the hospital equipment beside it.
The Embrace Nest is built right alongside Phoenix's own infant warmers, incubators, and phototherapy units. The Embrace Nest is a CE-marked medical device and FDA listed, made to the same standards as the hospital equipment beside it.
Why Equipment is Only Part of the Answer
Embrace began as a device. In those early years, we learned the lesson that has shaped everything since: equipment alone does not change a health system.
Today, our work rests on a model of training, equipment, and partnership, and all three are required. Health workers are trained to prevent and manage hypothermia. Warmers go where they are needed, from rural hospitals to ambulances. Local partners and ministries of health carry the work forward and build it into the way care is delivered.
That model is changing systems. In Sudan, Embrace Warmers are written into the national training manual for newborn care and integrated into the national health reporting system. In Zambia, they are written into the national neonatal transport standards, with more than 200 consecutive babies arriving by ambulance at a normal temperature in less than 8 months.
Phoenix makes the equipment pillar something we can count on. That frees our team and partners to focus on training and on the relationships that make change last.
What Public-Private Partnership Can Look Like
Embrace is a nonprofit. Phoenix is a private company. On paper, our priorities could pull in different directions. In practice, they have not.
We often go first into places where neonatal care is still being built, working alongside ministries, hospitals, and local organizations. Phoenix brings decades of manufacturing experience and the commercial reach to sustain what we start together. Each of us does what the other cannot.
Sashi built Phoenix on the belief that babies need access to warmth, and his son Siddarth, who has recently joined the family business, brings his own lens of social impact to that same commitment.
The trust and respect between our teams is something people rarely see between public and private organizations. It begins with two people who never lose sight of who this work is for.
"A great deal of work has been done by both teams to establish the Embrace Nest warmer as the product of choice in places where it is needed most... Through an iterative process of product improvement, focused deployment, and comprehensive training programs, that trust has been earned, and the efficacy of the product speaks for itself... I fully believe in Melody's vision for the Embrace Nest Warmer, and my team at Phoenix and I are committed to working alongside Embrace Global to make that vision a reality," stated Siddarth, Director Business Development.
Looking Ahead
Embrace has reached more than 1.4 million babies across more than 30 countries. By 2035, our goal is to reach 5 million babies every year. Getting there will take trained health workers, strong local partners, and equipment that is ready the moment a baby needs it. With Phoenix, we know that last piece is in good hands. Where a baby is born should never determine whether they stay warm.
Comments