EVIDENCE-BASED INTERVENTION

Shorten NICU stays...one milk drop at a time.

Driven by curiosity and grounded in purpose, MiDI™ brings together innovation, compassion, and evidence-based care to create meaningful change for infants, families, and NICU teams. Together, we're reimagining developmental feeding — one milk drop at a time.

what is midi?

Simple intervention. Extraordinary impact.

Research tells us 80% of premature infants will have difficulty with feeding due to multiple reasons including immaturity, the deprivation of the in-utero experience of sucking and swallowing, and the constant invasion of their mouths due to routine NICU care. Each infant will have their own threshold of tolerance with some infants avoiding or refusing to eat.

The Milk Drop Intervention (MiDI™) was developed to help offset and mitigate negative oral experiences and to allow premature infants to safely practice and enjoy sucking, swallowing, and breathing with droplets of milk during as they matured and developed.

This led to an IRB approved research project called the Milk Drop Study.

The Evidence

Backed by published research

9 of 10 of the subject groups had a shorter length of stay in the NICU

$663,000+ in adjusted hospital cost savings among study participants

“Innovation in Patient Care” Award

Iowa Organization of Nurse Leader’s

The story behind MiDI

It all started because of a baby named Lily...

Barb O’Rourke RN-NIC, C-ELBW, TIP, is a neonatal nurse with over 30 years of experience caring for premature and critically ill infants. Her commitment and promise to one premature infant, named Lily, led her to develop the Milk Drop Intervention (MiDI) and to serve as clinical lead on the research project called the Milk Drop Study. Barb is a consultant, speaker, inventor, and cofounder of MiDI™ LLC. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards for innovation in patient care.

MiDI DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM

Going one step further...

to provide CONSISTENT DELIVERY...EVERY FEEDING

The MiDI™ Milk Drop Developmental System advances the Milk Drop Intervention to provide the first developmental prefeeding tools, intentionally engineered and designed to help caregivers offer the milk drop intervention both naturally and consistently to even the smallest of infants. Each intervention becomes a positive multi-sensory enjoyable oral experience, building and wiring neural connections to support oral feeding readiness.

The MiDI™ Milk Drop Adaptor is ENFit compatible. The micro-lumen creates a capillary action to pull milk from the hub into the adaptor. Engineered for precise controlled micro-droplets of milk for the smallest of infants.

MiDI™ Milk Drop Developmental Soother is designed to accept the MiDI milk drop adaptor to transfer milk through the short canal of the soother directly into infant’s cheek.

The MiDI™ Developmental Milk Drop System was developed to support consistent caregiver implementation of the Milk Drop Method. Clinical outcomes in the peer-reviewed studies evaluating the Milk Drop Method should not be interpreted as outcomes established for the MiDI™ Developmental Milk Drop System unless specifically identified.

Contact

Questions? Let's talk.

Send us a note about products, training, implementation, or research collaboration – one of our team members will reach out.

  • (515) 220-8900

  • 5746 Quarry Drive, Ames, IA 50010

We will send you occassional emails about promotions, new products and important updates to keep you in the loop.

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