NeoNavigator — Peer-to-peer neonatal expertise for your NICU

Ways we work together

Start with one conversation, or work with us across the unit.

Every one of these is a conversation between clinicians, not a service delivered to you. Start wherever is useful and stop whenever it stops being useful.

On-Demand Case Consults

Bring us a baby you want another senior view on. We talk it through with your team over secure chat or video, usually the same day, and put the reasoning in writing so your notes hold it.

Your entry point

Virtual Tele-Rounds

A weekly video round through your unit's active cases with an experienced neonatologist. All teach, all learn — your whole team grows with every round.

Ongoing mentorship

Team Education & Simulation

Resuscitation drills taught by an NRP Training-of-Trainers certified instructor, plus line care, feeding protocols and developmental positioning — for doctors and nurses, because outcomes live in nursing care.

Whole-team capability

New NICU Setup

Planning or expanding a unit? Layout, equipment prioritized for your actual budget, staffing models, and a protocol starter kit — so you build it right the first time.

For new & growing units

Nursing Training & Quality Improvement

Jibini M. Mathew, our neonatal nursing lead and a NICU In-charge with ten years in neonatal intensive care, works directly with your nursing team — online each week, and in person when we visit. Nurses are the backbone of a NICU, and most outcomes we are asked to improve are decided at the bedside rather than on a ward round.

Led by a neonatal nurse

Family-Centered Care Support

Parent engagement, counselling frameworks, palliative care, and discharge planning — the human side of neonatology, strengthened alongside the clinical.

Woven into every engagement

⭐ The NICU Quality Partnership

Our flagship 6–12 month engagement: baseline assessment → co-written, resource-appropriate protocols → monthly indicator tracking → team teaching. Measured against the numbers that matter: hypothermia on admission, time to full feeds, culture-positive sepsis, antibiotic days, survival of <1500 g babies.

Discuss this on a call

Peer to peer

In a large teaching hospital you can walk down the corridor and ask a colleague. In a smaller unit there is no corridor.

That conversation — two clinicians thinking aloud about one baby — is where a great deal of good neonatal care actually happens. It is also the thing a pediatrician running a unit alone almost never gets, and it is missed most at three in the morning, when it matters most.

NeoNavigator is that corridor. Not oversight, not monitoring, not a service that takes your cases away from you. A senior neonatologist who picks up, thinks it through with you, and is still there when the picture changes at midnight.

What that means in practice

You keep the baby. Every decision is the treating clinician's, always.

We think it through with you — not a written opinion posted back, a conversation.

We stay available as the picture changes, rather than signing off after one answer.

Your team gets more capable — the point is that you need us less over time, not more.

No audit. No inspection. No report to your management about how your unit is performing.

Nothing said to a family or a colleague that undermines the doctor in charge.

Why we stay small

The same faces, every time. That is the whole point.

A large panel of rotating consultants sounds like more support. In practice it is less. Every new voice brings a slightly different threshold, a slightly different weaning plan, a slightly different answer to the same question — and your nursing staff are the ones left to reconcile them at 3am. We deliberately stay small so that the advice your unit receives is one consistent clinical approach, given by someone who already knows your babies, your equipment and your team.

One consistent standard

The same neonatologist reviews your unit week after week. Decisions build on the last conversation instead of starting over, and your team is never caught between two seniors advising differently.

Protocols that actually take hold

Nursing staff adopt a practice when they see it applied the same way every single time. Consistency is what turns a protocol on paper into something the night shift does by reflex — and it is exactly what a rotating panel cannot give you.

We learn your unit, not a generic one

Your bed count, your ventilators, your staffing ratios, what your team is already good at and where it is stretched. Advice you can act on tonight, not best-practice guidance written for a unit that does not resemble yours.

Scope

What we do — and what we deliberately don't.

Being clear about the boundaries is part of working as colleagues. You should know exactly what you are engaging before you engage it.

What we offer

Clinical consults

Senior neonatology input on the cases you want a second opinion on — scheduled rounds or when something is not going the way it should.

Baby-by-baby review

We work through individual babies with your team rather than issuing generic advice. That is how the problems specific to neonatology actually get solved — one infant, one decision at a time.

Honest unit assessment

A clear-eyed look at your equipment, protocols, staffing and workflow, with findings you can act on and a realistic view of what is worth changing first.

Nursing training, built for your unit

Designed around your team's actual strengths and gaps, and around the equipment you actually have. Nursing staff are the core pillar of any NICU, and training them is not an add-on.

Written documentation you keep

Every consult is documented in full — findings, reasoning, drugs and dosages — on an EMR chosen to meet the data and privacy rules of your own jurisdiction, and it stays accessible to your hospital. Not a phone call your team has to remember, but a record they can return to, and that follows the baby.

Parenteral nutrition written for your pharmacy

TPN prescribed around the preparations actually available in your region, not the ones a European guideline assumes. A regimen you cannot source is not a regimen.

Nutrition assessment and follow-up

Every small baby assessed and then followed — growth is the slow outcome that gets dropped when a unit is busy, and it is the one that shows up years later.

Pointing you to the right resources

Which course, which certification, which reference for which member of staff. We will guide your team toward the training that will genuinely move your outcomes, including where it is not ours.

What we don't offer

Remote monitoring by cameras or AI

We do not place our nursing staff behind screens watching your babies through cameras or algorithmic monitoring. We have not found that model to improve care. The people at the cot side are the ones who can act, and our job is to make them better at it — not to watch them.

Off-the-shelf training programmes

No fixed curriculum delivered identically to every unit. A generic programme flatters the trainer and changes very little. Every programme we run is built after we have seen your unit and understood its particular strengths and constraints.

Taking over your clinical decisions

You are the doctor in charge and you stay the doctor in charge. We advise, teach and think alongside you — the care of your babies remains yours, and so does the credit for it.

Beyond neonatology

When the question is not a neonatal one.

Some babies need a subspecialist. Getting that opinion should not mean a transfer, a long wait, or a family driving to another city.

Paediatric Neurology & Epilepsy

Dr. Rafat Trivedi

MBBS, DCH, DNB (Paediatrics) · Fellowship in Paediatric Neurology & Epilepsy, Mumbai

Publishes as Rafat Sayed

Over 20 years in clinical practice, 15 of them focused on paediatric neurology and epilepsy. Senior Consultant at Marengo Asia Institute, Gurugram, and founder of Synergy Neurocare. Trained at Jaslok Hospital and B. J. Wadia Children's Hospital, Mumbai, with further neurophysiology training at Case Western Reserve University Hospital, Cleveland.

Neonatal seizures and epilepsy, including surgical work-up
Abnormal tone, cerebral palsy, developmental delay and neuro-rehabilitation
Neuromuscular disorders, neurogenetic and metabolic conditions
EEG, video-EEG, BERA and VEP — conducts and interprets
National faculty at Pedicon, Neuropedicon and the Asian Oceanian Congress of Child Neurology

Paediatric Gastroenterology & Hepatology

Dr. Nidhi Rawal

MBBS · MD Paediatrics (New York) · Fellowship in Paediatric GI, Hepatology & Nutrition (Maryland) · MPH, Johns Hopkins

US-trained subspecialist

Trained entirely in the United States: MD in Paediatrics at Brookdale University Hospital, New York, a three-year fellowship in Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the University of Maryland Children's Hospital, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

She went on to direct the Paediatric Eosinophilic GI Disorders Programme and co-direct the Coeliac Disease Programme at Maryland, and to co-direct the Paediatric Feeding Disorders Programme at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, Johns Hopkins — running subspecialty programmes, not merely working in them.

Now Lead Senior Consultant in paediatric gastroenterology and hepatology at Madhukar Rainbow Children's Hospital, Delhi, Max Hospital and Cloudnine, Gurugram, and founder of the Center for Paediatric Gastroenterology.

Feeding difficulty, ARFID and disorders of GI motility
Cholestasis and hepatopancreatobiliary disease
Eosinophilic GI disorders, coeliac disease and IBD
Full diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy, including PEG placement and liver biopsy
GI problems in children with autism, ADHD and other neurodevelopmental variation

Paediatric Surgery & Urology

Dr. Anand Sinha

M.Ch Paediatric Surgery (AIIMS, New Delhi) · Fellowship in Paediatric Robotic Urology (University of Chicago)

Senior Director and Head of the Department of Paediatric Surgery at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, a post he has held for 13 years. More than 10,000 surgical procedures over 17 years, with a particular focus on minimally invasive surgery in neonates and children — laparoscopic, video-assisted thoracoscopic, endoscopic urology and robotic surgery.

Neonatal surgery, including the decision of whether and when to operate
Paediatric gastrointestinal and thoracic surgery
Paediatric urology, including robotic and endoscopic approaches
Solid tumours in children
Works alongside paediatric intensive care and paediatric anaesthesia in the same unit

Paediatric Cardiology

Dr. Manvinder Singh Sachdev

DNB Paediatric Cardiology, Madras Medical Mission, Chennai

Fetal & interventional cardiology

Director and Head of the Department of Paediatric Cardiology at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram, with more than 16 years in paediatric cardiology and previous posts at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Indraprastha Apollo and Lotus Children's Hospital, Hyderabad.

He established interventional paediatric cardiology and dedicated fetal cardiology programmes at both Sir Ganga Ram and Fortis, and is among a small number of paediatric cardiologists in India performing device closure of perimembranous ventricular septal defects and ductal stenting.

Fetal cardiology — congenital heart disease detected before delivery, so the birth can be planned
Duct-dependent lesions, including ductal stenting
Murmurs and cyanosis in the newborn, and which babies genuinely need transfer
Interventional paediatric cardiology, including device closure of perimembranous VSDs
Published in national and international paediatric cardiology journals

For cases that are genuinely difficult, or where we want more information before advising, we bring in the relevant subspecialist. These are colleagues we have worked with directly, not names on a roster. Dr. Sinha and Dr. Sachdev head paediatric surgery and paediatric cardiology at the same hospital as Dr. Consul — three departments that already discuss babies together in the same building — and Dr. Rawal and Dr. Consul have presented research together. The post-operative diaphragmatic hernia in our case stories is exactly the kind of baby where neonatology and surgery have to think together. Consults are arranged through NeoNavigator so that the request, the opinion and the reasoning sit in one place your team can refer back to.

Built for the units that need it most

You don't have to hand us your whole unit. Start with two babies.

Across much of the world, and particularly in low- and middle-income countries, the barrier to better newborn outcomes is not willingness. It is that trained neonatologists are scarce, expensive to recruit, slow to train, and hard to retain once trained — so a capable pediatrician ends up carrying a NICU alone. NeoNavigator exists for exactly that gap: senior neonatal expertise your unit can draw on without having to find, fund and keep a full-time neonatologist of its own.

And because committing an entire unit to an outside team is a lot to ask of anyone, we don't ask it. You can begin with two babies, and the first week is free.

Step one · one week · free

A free trial, on two babies

Our team works alongside yours on two infants for a week, in person or remotely, at no charge. A week will not change your outcomes and we would not claim otherwise — it is there to answer a different question: does working together actually feel right? Is the chemistry between your team and ours one you want more of?

Step two · six months minimum

Two babies, properly

If the trial works, the smallest engagement we recommend is two babies over at least six months. Below that you cannot honestly tell whether anything has changed — neonatal outcomes move slowly, and a shorter run tells you about luck rather than about care.

Step three · annual partnership

We come to you

Units that take an annual engagement are visited in person every three to six months — hands-on upskilling on your floor, with your equipment. Between visits, weekly classes built around the specific things that unit needs to get better at, not a fixed syllabus.

Free trial

Two babies. One week. Free.

We will run a trial engagement on two babies for a week at no cost to your unit, with our team involved either on site or remotely, whichever suits you. There is no fee, no commitment attached to it, and nothing to sign.

We do it this way because the question that matters cannot be answered from a brochure: can our team and yours actually work well together? If the answer is no, you have lost a week and learned something useful. If it is yes, you already know exactly what you are signing up for.

Annual partners get more than remote support: a visit in person every three to six months to work alongside your team on your own floor, plus weekly teaching shaped around what that unit specifically needs. Documentation from every consult — including drugs and dosages — is written on an EMR that meets your jurisdiction's data and privacy requirements, and your hospital keeps access to it.

Case stories

What backup looks like at the cot side.

Real consultations, de-identified and published with the referring unit's written consent. Every clinical decision remained with the treating team. All three are from our first partner unit, a 25-bed Level III NICU in western India — these are early cases, and we would rather show you three real ones than imply a longer list.

Case one

A large pneumothorax at two days old — and no chest drain

The unit 25-bed Level III NICU, western India.

The baby Term male, 2.5 kg at birth, in respiratory distress from the first day. On day two he developed a large right-sided pneumothorax — on high-flow support at 35% oxygen, working hard at 78 breaths a minute, and not yet on feeds.

The question A large pneumothorax in a term newborn usually means an intercostal drain: a chest tube, several days in situ, and everything that follows it. The team wanted a senior opinion before committing to one.

What we did Guided a needle thoracocentesis remotely, in real time, with the treating team performing it at the cot side. Draining the air with a needle rather than placing a tube resolved the pneumothorax without a drain, a drain site, or the days of immobility that come with one. The procedure and the decision to proceed were the treating clinician's; we advised through it.

Why it matters Nothing here needed equipment the unit did not have. What it needed was someone senior available at the moment the decision was being made — which is the entire difference between a needle and a chest tube.

Outcome: discharged home on full feeds five days later, with no chest drain ever placed.

Case two

28 weeks, 1 kg — no ventilator, no antibiotics

The unit 25-bed Level III NICU, western India.

The baby Inborn male, 28⁺² weeks, extremely low birth weight at 1 kg, delivered by caesarean section with delayed cry. Respiratory distress syndrome, risk factors for early-onset sepsis, and neonatal jaundice in the first days of life.

The question The treating team asked for help managing him non-invasively. In an extremely preterm baby with RDS, the default in many units is to intubate and ventilate — and once a 1 kg baby is on a ventilator, coming off it is its own battle.

What we did Heated humidified high-flow nasal cannula from the outset, with surfactant given by MIST — less invasive surfactant therapy, delivered without intubating him. Caffeine alongside. Feeds advanced steadily, the umbilical venous line came out after minimal days, and no antibiotics were given at any point. Every decision was made by the treating clinician; our role was to advise and stay available as the picture changed.

Why it matters Three of the things that most often go wrong for a 1 kg baby simply did not happen: no ventilator, no prolonged central line, no antibiotic course. Each one avoided is a route to harm closed off.

Progress: still with the unit and doing well — up to 1.24 kg, on high-flow at 5 litres in room air, feeding well, never intubated and never on antibiotics.

Case three

The unit had an oscillator. What it needed was confidence using it.

The unit 25-bed Level III NICU, western India.

The baby Term male with a left-sided congenital diaphragmatic hernia, repaired at two days old. A week after surgery he was 2.7 kg, chest drain still draining, catheterised, nil by mouth, working hard with subcostal and intercostal retractions, and on broad-spectrum antibiotics. He then developed ventilator-associated pneumonia, with collapse on the left and infiltrates on the right.

The question This baby needed high-frequency oscillatory ventilation. The unit had the machine — but the team had little experience running it, and an oscillator you are not confident with is not really an available option. That gap, between owning equipment and being able to use it under pressure, is one of the most common we see.

What we did Worked through HFOV with them on this baby: how to set it, how to read what it was telling them, when to adjust and when to leave it alone. Teaching on a real infant rather than in a workshop, so the learning stuck to the equipment in front of them. Alongside that, a defined antibiotic course rather than an open-ended one — stopped once cultures returned negative and inflammatory markers fell — and a stepwise wean as the lungs recovered.

Why it matters We favour the least invasive route that will work, but a post-operative CDH with pneumonia is not the baby to be dogmatic about. The point is matching the tool to the child — and the unit now has an oscillator its team can actually reach for. That capability outlasts the consult.

Outcome: discharged home on day 23, in room air and on full feeds, off all antibiotics, having had his chest drain out and his pneumonia treated and resolved.

The team

The people who would actually be working with you.

Not a platform. Not an agency. A senior neonatologist and a senior neonatal nurse — because a NICU's outcomes are decided at the cot side at least as much as on the ward round.

Dr. Megha Consul

Founder · MD, DNB (Paediatrics) · Fellowship, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine

Senior Consultant & Head of Department, Neonatology at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram — and head of a neonatology department continuously since 2012, after eleven years leading the unit at Max Hospital, Gurgaon. Fellowship-trained in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, with 22 years in paediatrics and 14 since fellowship. Her clinical signature is gentle, low-intervention newborn care: HHHFNC as a primary approach to RDS even in extremely preterm babies, with surfactant given by MIST.

Training

Clinical Fellowship, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine — Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Western Ontario / London Health Sciences Centre, Canada (2010–2012)
DNB Paediatrics — Diplomate of the National Board (2006)
MD Paediatrics and MBBS — Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal

Clinical leadership

Head of Department, Neonatology — Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram (2023–present)
Senior Consultant & Head, Neonatology — Max Hospital, Gurgaon (2012–2023), leading clinical care, staffing and quality standards for a high-acuity newborn service
Developer of a novel MIST catheter for less-invasive surfactant delivery, currently in progress toward publication

Teaching, research & faculty roles

NRP Training-of-Trainers certified (2024) — teaches resuscitation instructors, not only providers
Organising Secretary & Lead Faculty, Non-Invasive Ventilation Workshop, NEOCON 2017; Organising Secretary, Paediatric CME, Max Super Speciality Hospital 2019
Guest lecturer, Maulana Azad Medical College — HHHFNC in extremely preterm newborns (2024)
Peer-reviewed publications in NeoReviews, Indian Pediatrics and the Indian Journal of Pediatrics, including one-year outcomes of VLBW infants; research presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting (Boston) and the Canadian Paediatric Society annual conference
Committee member for NICU research, technology, and residency/fellowship training during her Canadian fellowship

Jibini M. Mathew

Neonatal Nursing Lead · GNM · NICU In-charge

Fourteen years in nursing, ten of them in neonatal intensive care, and NICU In-charge at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram for the past three years. Previously a NICU nurse at Aster Hospital, Dubai, and NICU team leader at Apollo Cradle. She leads the nursing training and quality improvement side of every NeoNavigator engagement.

At the cot side

Extreme preterm care, ventilated babies, extubation and phototherapy
Therapeutic cooling, pneumothorax care and fluid calculation
Cannulation, intubation assistance, PICC line assistance and feeding tube placement

Running a unit

Staffing, duty rosters, equipment checks and bed management as NICU In-charge
Neonatal nursing across three health systems — India, the UAE and private and corporate hospitals

Why she matters to your unit

A protocol only changes anything once the night shift does it by reflex. Nurses learn that fastest from another nurse who has stood in the same place — not from a doctor's slide deck.
Works with your nursing team weekly online, and in person during partner visits
English, Hindi and Malayalam

Why we started NeoNavigator

Primum non nocere — first, do no harm. That principle is why I practise gentle, low-intervention newborn care, and it is why NeoNavigator exists: to extend that care to underserved units, through teaching, better protocols, and innovations that bring the cost of NICU care down rather than up. Nursing staff are the core pillars of every unit I have led. Any improvement that skips them is not an improvement.

— Dr. Megha Consul, Founder

Download Dr. Megha Consul's full CV PDF · 2 pages · publications, fellowship and teaching record

In their words

What has changed in the units we work with.

Outcomes reported by the unit we work with, in their own assessment.

Reported by the unit

What has changed since we started

Fewer babies escalated to higher-line antibiotics
Fewer respiratory interventions overall
Less surfactant used, and fewer babies ventilated
Better handling of complex cases — including the ones the team would previously have found hardest

Dr. Abdulsamad Radhanpuri Aayat Hospital, Ahmedabad
25-bed NICU · 5-bed PICU

Every NICU deserves a senior colleague on call.

Running a NICU without backup is the hardest job in medicine.

The 2 a.m. decision

Guidelines written for someone else's hospital

Knowing outcomes could be better

Three steps. One ongoing partnership.

Connect

Chart the course

Navigate together

Start with one conversation, or work with us across the unit.

On-Demand Case Consults

Virtual Tele-Rounds

Team Education & Simulation

New NICU Setup

Nursing Training & Quality Improvement

Family-Centered Care Support

⭐ The NICU Quality Partnership

What that means in practice

The same faces, every time. That is the whole point.

One consistent standard

Protocols that actually take hold

We learn your unit, not a generic one

What we do — and what we deliberately don't.

What we offer

Clinical consults

Baby-by-baby review

Honest unit assessment

Nursing training, built for your unit

Written documentation you keep

Parenteral nutrition written for your pharmacy

Nutrition assessment and follow-up

Pointing you to the right resources

What we don't offer

Remote monitoring by cameras or AI

Off-the-shelf training programmes

Taking over your clinical decisions

When the question is not a neonatal one.

Dr. Rafat Trivedi

Dr. Nidhi Rawal

Dr. Anand Sinha

Dr. Manvinder Singh Sachdev

You don't have to hand us your whole unit. Start with two babies.

Two babies. One week. Free.

Five areas. One goal: babies who go home well.

Respiratory Management

Nutrition & Growth

Infection Control

Neurodevelopmental Care

Family-Centered Care

Designed for the NICU you have — not the one in the textbook.

The indicators we move

What backup looks like at the cot side.

A large pneumothorax at two days old — and no chest drain

28 weeks, 1 kg — no ventilator, no antibiotics

The unit had an oscillator. What it needed was confidence using it.

What has changed in the units we work with.

What has changed since we started

The people who would actually be working with you.

Dr. Megha Consul

Jibini M. Mathew

Free, practical resources — because trust is earned.

Quick Reference: Neonatology Essentials

More resources are on the way

Your NICU doesn't have to navigate alone.