I absolutely love musical theatre and would love to see more artistic EA-themed productions—not just dry/explanatory content.

Suggestion: instead of running your own Bay Area production, it might be more scalable to find a group of people in the Bay who are interested in doing one and license the rights to them. The licensing fee could help cover the Berlin production's costs as well as compensate those who contributed to the IP. A licensing model would also make it easier to bring productions to other locations, like NYC (off-off-Broadway) and universities.

I also have another question: Do you happen to have any data on the demographics of the people you have successfully reached and supported? I would be mainly interested if you were able to tap into global talent (that is, talent outside of main AIS hubs, such as the UK, US, Europe) because that relates to my own work at Condor Initiative :)

Thanks a lot for the write-up!
Skimming through this post + your website, the following thing was not completely clear to me:

Do you mainly target ML experts who are already interested in pursuing AIS careers (and thus you accelerate their progress) or do you also do outreach to ML experts who have not considered it as a career (either due to lack of knowledge or due to lack of initial interest)?

If it's the latter, how do you go about nudging people towards AIS?

If it's the former, how do you identify ML experts who know about AIS but need support to transition (do you e.g.advertise yourself at ML conferences)?

I've supervised Javier & Oscar for a paper before, and they've done great work. I think this project seems promising - to my knowledge there's been little work on long-form hallucination detection, I expect there's low hanging fruit here, and the results seem decent so far. This is a fairly small grant, and will help unblock the project, so feels like a no-brainer to me

I think that detecting hallucinations in long-form content is a good downstream task to improve monitoring methods on (and find insights that translate to higher stakes tasks like control or deception), in addition to being near-term useful for making models safer. Improving factuality is likely to also help with making systems more profitable, which is slightly accelerationist, but I am generally pro work that legibly demonstrates how safety is incentivised by profit-seeking.

CoI Note: I am a (very hands off) supervisor for this project and will likely be a co-author on the paper resulting from this. But my quality bar for spending time on a project is notably higher than my bar for regrants, so I don't feel too concerned

@Martian-Moonshine What about New York? 😁🏙️

What progress have you made since your last update?

We have successfully designed a multi-serotype phage-based vaccine construct against Salmonella to provide broad protection across diverse serotypes. While in vivo validation is pending, the immunogenic epitopes have been computationally and experimentally validated for strong protective potential. This innovation could significantly impact typhoid control in endemic regions.

In a complementary effort, my MSc student has isolated 34 bacteriophages active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, following targeted isolation from local clinical strains. This growing phage library is vital to developing personalized therapy options for drug-resistant infections in our setting. Together, these initiatives demonstrate our capacity to deliver locally relevant, globally significant solutions in infectious disease control.

What are your next steps?

1. 1. In Vivo Validation of Vaccine
   Our immediate goal is to conduct in vivo studies on the multi-serotype Salmonella phage-based vaccine to assess its efficacy and protective capabilities. This is a crucial step toward validating the vaccine’s potential for widespread use in combating Salmonella infections.

   2. Expanding the Phage Bank
   We will continue expanding our phage bank by isolating additional phages targeting Salmonella, E. coli, and Pseudomonas. Building a well-resourced, diverse phage library is critical for developing effective, locally relevant phage therapy solutions to combat antimicrobial resistance.

   3. Development of Phage-Based Bandages
   My MSc student works on an innovative phage-based bandage designed for diabetic wound care. This project aims to use phage therapy to treat resistant bacterial infections in diabetic wounds, offering a promising new therapeutic option for patients with chronic wounds.
   

Is there anything others could help you with?

1. Funding for In Vivo Studies
We seek financial support to carry out in vivo testing of our multi-serotype Salmonella phage vaccine. These studies are essential for demonstrating efficacy and advancing toward translational and clinical applications.

2. Resources for Phage Bank Expansion
We welcome collaboration and support in expanding our phage bank, especially in isolating and characterizing new phages targeting Salmonella, E. coli, and Pseudomonas. A strong phage repository is foundational for developing tailored, effective phage therapies in our region.

3. Access to Sequencing Infrastructure
A robust, locally accessible sequencing platform would significantly reduce phage genome characterisation costs and turnaround time. Partnerships enabling affordable high-throughput sequencing through shared infrastructure or sponsored access would dramatically enhance our capacity for rapid, data-driven phage research.

@Austin Your suggestion #2 is on our roadmap as a thing we might work on (an online version played by humans, an online LLM-powered version, and an offline board game you can order)!

Approving this proposal, and funding it to half of the total ask. I'm not personally in the target demographic (it's been a while since I've studied off course notes), I'm excited to fund this becuase:

• Michael Nielson and Lawrence Lessig are two folks I've long admired, and their support is a strong signal

• While I was not previously familiar with them, the team behind coursenotes seems quite strong, with multiple interesting projects to their name

• The design of the site itself is nice, and I appreciate the clarity of vision listed on their "why" page

Best of luck to the team!

(Aside, a minor UX nit: I think this is better as a single select rather than multiselect, rn almost no coursenotes fit the intersection of any two options)

Approving this proposal. AI Futures Project has been one of the most hyped efforts in my circles for a while now, and for good reason: it brings together some of the most accomplished individuals in the AI safety scene, working under a single banner. For this reason alone, I think the team is worth taking a bet on.

They've also already made their mark, with AI 2027. I'd gotten a sneak peek, and had actually been a bit unimpressed - I had high expectations, but imo the preview suffered from "too many cooks in the kitchen" wrt writing & site design. But by launch, AIFP had upped their game, with a polished product that's been well & widely received. It's certainly shaped how I think about the next few years of AI development. Kudos to the team for being willing to share an early v0, and then iterating to make it better over time!

I think the people working on this are super smart and probably know what they're doing, but I figured I'd throw in my unsolicited 2c:

1. It seems like the core team is already heavy on researchers, so it's unclear to me that hiring more researchers is the right strategic move, vs investing in roles that can produce great content for a wide audience. Right now their plan seems to be to partner with really great folks (eg Scott for writing, Oli for website design, Dwarkesh for podcasts), and it seems to be working so far, but I would guess that having in-house expertise on this could be super valuable, much more so than a marginal researcher.

2. Specifically with the TTX, I haven't played through one myself, but my understanding is it's currently costly to run (requiring an in-person expert facilitator). I'd be pretty excited for ways to automate that, scale it out, and get much wider distribution, eg by shipping an interactive web experience powered by LLMs, or packaging it as a commercial board game.

Anyways, AIFP is one of the most exciting efforts I'm currently tracking; I've made a small personal donation as a show of support. I expect that AIFP will be amply funded by larger parties like OpenPhil and SFF, and as Neel says, is not really in my comparative advantage; but I still think that independent donations are valuable for diversifying funding streams.

@NeelNanda Thanks so much Neel, appreciate it!

Au nom de l'ARS, merci pour ce travail qui sera fort utile !

So many good projects, but not enough money to support them all 😄 your idea sounds great I wish you good luck 👍.

I don't believe AI 2027 will be my comparative advantage as a regranter, but I think AI 2027 is great, they're an excellent place to donate money, and I wanted to put my money where my mouth is with a token donation.

I was very impressed with AI 2027. While I don't agree with all of the assumptions, and it's substantially faster than I predict, I found it scarily plausible. It was very productive for concretising my own thoughts and making me more aware of key considerations, for example, whether an AI will try to align its successor. I think this kind of writing is valuable and I would love to see more.

It also seems to have been very well received publicly (much more so than I expected), getting a ton of attention while being much higher quality than the messages that many people may have previously been exposed to. The team has an excellent track record, and I think the success of AI 2027 gives them significant momentum, in addition to Daniel's profile and positive reputation as a whistleblower who tried to walk away from large amounts of money, so it's plausible to me that they can get a good amount of public/policy attention. Though I would be much more optimistic about this if they hired someone with substantial policy/lobbying experience.

While I don't expect to agree with the team on everything, I broadly think they have good judgment, care about the correct things, and will do things that are valuable and helpful. I view this donation and endorsement as a bet on the team and their future judgment, more so than any specific future plan.

@jaiwithani Yes, that's fine!

Update: May 5th - Documentary is out

OK so this took way longer than expected to get out.

I'll post another update later detailing everything that happened since November but for now the full documentary is available to watch on X and Youtube.

Thanks again to everyone who donated! Your name should be in the credits according to your donation tier.

@CarmenCondor my bad - here it is!

So exciting, @gleech ! Is it correct that the updated report is not out yet? I tried clicking through the links here + searched on LW, but couldn't find it. (Sorry if I'm blind to the obvious!)

Congratulations on the launch of the 30 minute cut!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8zhrsLxhI

What's the overall status of the project? Is this the conclusion? Will there be future versions? I think this should be clarified, especially if the project remains open on Manifund.

@Austin Excellent! SFF got back to me and said I could apply with pending 501c3 status, but since the form still asks for an org with documentation proving 501c3 status I'm putting down Manifold for Charity and linking to the IRS determination letter, with a note about Luthien's pending status.

Would it be okay if, in the event SFF wants to issue a grant and Luthien's 501c3 status is still pending, I reach out then to confirm the fiscal sponsorship details? (If this happens, I'm totally fine with the 5% overhead.)

Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

The post went up roughly on time (29th December) and was fairly well-received (though it garnered less karma than last year). Comments were good and only the Alex Altair entry required notable edits. This is evidence but not strong evidence that the current version is error-free.

Our conference scrape provided some academic work which I think is underappreciated on LW but less than I hoped.

I'm very happy with the new fields (target case and broad approach) and our data entry on them.

Change: Following comments from funders we didn't do the "glossy" PDF version. Surplus money will go towards the 2025 version.

Spending breakdown

100% on salaries for the team. Thanks especially to Shoshannah Tekofsky, a highly graceful research manager.

Dear Carolina Oliveira,

Thank you once again for your thorough engagement, curiosity, and commitment to due diligence. These are exactly the kind of thoughtful questions that help refine and strengthen high-impact interventions, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide more clarity on the NeoVoltaic project and our collaboration with Tiny Hearts Technology.

NeoVoltaic is not officially fundraising on behalf of Tiny Hearts Technology. Rather, our project leverages their proven solution—Crib A’Glow phototherapy units—as a key component within a broader healthcare-energy access program we are implementing.

We are in active partnership discussions with Tiny Hearts to procure, deploy, and scale their technology in under-resourced primary health centers across Northern Nigeria, where power outages often render traditional phototherapy unusable. While Tiny Hearts is indeed receiving support directly for distribution, our role is contextual deployment, including:

• Site assessments

• Procurement through verified channels

• Renewable energy integration

• Training of healthcare workers

• Monitoring and community engagement

This means NeoVoltaic complements, but does not duplicate, Tiny Hearts’ efforts. Our added value lies in reaching marginalized and energy-deficient areas, especially where solar integration is necessary for 24/7 functionality.

Clarifying the Impact Numbers

You're absolutely right to request clarity here, and I appreciate the opportunity to clarify both our projections and the context behind the numbers:

What We Stated:

“Save the lives of over 30,000 newborns annually by treating jaundice early.”

This is a forward-looking estimate based on:

• Treating 500 newborns per year per device (based on current use data from hospitals using Crib A’Glow).

• 60 facilities × 500 = 30,000 newborns treated per year (not necessarily all at risk of dying, but at risk of complications or severe jaundice if left untreated).

• This aligns with the assertion: "Every $50 saves a newborn", since the unit cost divided by expected beneficiaries supports this.

The 550+ figure quoted on Tiny Hearts’ website is likely a conservative direct estimate of lives saved (not just treated) based on cases that would have otherwise required exchange blood transfusion or resulted in fatality. However, over 550,000 newborns have been treated with the device since its inception (a much higher number). This is reflected in more recent publications and updates from the organization.

So to be clear: 30,000 newborns reached annually does not imply 30,000 lives saved directly. Rather, it represents at-risk infants who can be treated early and effectively due to access to functioning phototherapy, thus preventing complications, disabilities, or mortality.

We are currently working with clinical advisors to fine-tune these outcome metrics with evidence-backed conversion rates from treatment to lives saved. We’re also developing an impact dashboard to transparently communicate this distinction.

On Cost-Effectiveness and Value You're absolutely right that cost-effectiveness is key. Here's a quick summary:

• Crib A’Glow unit cost: ~$360–400

• Operational lifespan: 5–7 years

• Patients treated annually per unit: 400–600

• Cost per treated infant: $0.20–$0.30

• Even if only 5–10% of those infants were at high risk of death or disability, the cost per life saved would remain extremely low and well-aligned with global benchmarks for cost-effective health interventions.

We are also preparing to:

• Collect third-party validation of impact from facilities using the units

• Track neonatal mortality reduction in each deployment site over time

• Document case studies to support qualitative understanding

The NeoVoltaic Project is driven by urgency. Northern Nigeria has some of the highest neonatal mortality rates globally, much of it preventable. A significant number of these deaths are linked to untreated jaundice, and a lack of reliable power for medical equipment is a known bottleneck.

We are confident that by pairing proven technology with targeted training, solar energy, and community mobilization, this project will deliver sustainable, life-saving impact at scale.

Thank you again, Carolina Oliveira, for asking the right questions. We value your insights deeply, and we’re committed to transparency, effectiveness, and long-term results. I’d be happy to provide further documentation, cost breakdowns, or connect with Tiny Hearts’ leadership directly if needed.

Warm regards,
Tahir Mahmood Saleh
Programs Manager | CREACCNG.ORG
📧 tahirm@creaccng.org  🌍 www.creaccng.org

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahir-mahmood-saleh-354b24146/

@ollive

I absolutely love musical theatre and would love to see more artistic EA-themed productions—not just dry/explanatory content.

Suggestion: instead of running your own Bay Area production, it might be more scalable to find a group of people in the Bay who are interested in doing one and license the rights to them. The licensing fee could help cover the Berlin production's costs as well as compensate those who contributed to the IP. A licensing model would also make it easier to bring productions to other locations, like NYC (off-off-Broadway) and universities.

I also have another question: Do you happen to have any data on the demographics of the people you have successfully reached and supported? I would be mainly interested if you were able to tap into global talent (that is, talent outside of main AIS hubs, such as the UK, US, Europe) because that relates to my own work at Condor Initiative :)

Thanks a lot for the write-up!
Skimming through this post + your website, the following thing was not completely clear to me:

Do you mainly target ML experts who are already interested in pursuing AIS careers (and thus you accelerate their progress) or do you also do outreach to ML experts who have not considered it as a career (either due to lack of knowledge or due to lack of initial interest)?

If it's the latter, how do you go about nudging people towards AIS?

If it's the former, how do you identify ML experts who know about AIS but need support to transition (do you e.g.advertise yourself at ML conferences)?

I've supervised Javier & Oscar for a paper before, and they've done great work. I think this project seems promising - to my knowledge there's been little work on long-form hallucination detection, I expect there's low hanging fruit here, and the results seem decent so far. This is a fairly small grant, and will help unblock the project, so feels like a no-brainer to me

I think that detecting hallucinations in long-form content is a good downstream task to improve monitoring methods on (and find insights that translate to higher stakes tasks like control or deception), in addition to being near-term useful for making models safer. Improving factuality is likely to also help with making systems more profitable, which is slightly accelerationist, but I am generally pro work that legibly demonstrates how safety is incentivised by profit-seeking.

CoI Note: I am a (very hands off) supervisor for this project and will likely be a co-author on the paper resulting from this. But my quality bar for spending time on a project is notably higher than my bar for regrants, so I don't feel too concerned

@Martian-Moonshine What about New York? 😁🏙️

What progress have you made since your last update?

We have successfully designed a multi-serotype phage-based vaccine construct against Salmonella to provide broad protection across diverse serotypes. While in vivo validation is pending, the immunogenic epitopes have been computationally and experimentally validated for strong protective potential. This innovation could significantly impact typhoid control in endemic regions.

In a complementary effort, my MSc student has isolated 34 bacteriophages active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, following targeted isolation from local clinical strains. This growing phage library is vital to developing personalized therapy options for drug-resistant infections in our setting. Together, these initiatives demonstrate our capacity to deliver locally relevant, globally significant solutions in infectious disease control.

What are your next steps?

1. 1. In Vivo Validation of Vaccine
   Our immediate goal is to conduct in vivo studies on the multi-serotype Salmonella phage-based vaccine to assess its efficacy and protective capabilities. This is a crucial step toward validating the vaccine’s potential for widespread use in combating Salmonella infections.

   2. Expanding the Phage Bank
   We will continue expanding our phage bank by isolating additional phages targeting Salmonella, E. coli, and Pseudomonas. Building a well-resourced, diverse phage library is critical for developing effective, locally relevant phage therapy solutions to combat antimicrobial resistance.

   3. Development of Phage-Based Bandages
   My MSc student works on an innovative phage-based bandage designed for diabetic wound care. This project aims to use phage therapy to treat resistant bacterial infections in diabetic wounds, offering a promising new therapeutic option for patients with chronic wounds.
   

Is there anything others could help you with?

1. Funding for In Vivo Studies
We seek financial support to carry out in vivo testing of our multi-serotype Salmonella phage vaccine. These studies are essential for demonstrating efficacy and advancing toward translational and clinical applications.

2. Resources for Phage Bank Expansion
We welcome collaboration and support in expanding our phage bank, especially in isolating and characterizing new phages targeting Salmonella, E. coli, and Pseudomonas. A strong phage repository is foundational for developing tailored, effective phage therapies in our region.

3. Access to Sequencing Infrastructure
A robust, locally accessible sequencing platform would significantly reduce phage genome characterisation costs and turnaround time. Partnerships enabling affordable high-throughput sequencing through shared infrastructure or sponsored access would dramatically enhance our capacity for rapid, data-driven phage research.

@Austin Your suggestion #2 is on our roadmap as a thing we might work on (an online version played by humans, an online LLM-powered version, and an offline board game you can order)!

Approving this proposal, and funding it to half of the total ask. I'm not personally in the target demographic (it's been a while since I've studied off course notes), I'm excited to fund this becuase:

• Michael Nielson and Lawrence Lessig are two folks I've long admired, and their support is a strong signal

• While I was not previously familiar with them, the team behind coursenotes seems quite strong, with multiple interesting projects to their name

• The design of the site itself is nice, and I appreciate the clarity of vision listed on their "why" page

Best of luck to the team!

(Aside, a minor UX nit: I think this is better as a single select rather than multiselect, rn almost no coursenotes fit the intersection of any two options)

Approving this proposal. AI Futures Project has been one of the most hyped efforts in my circles for a while now, and for good reason: it brings together some of the most accomplished individuals in the AI safety scene, working under a single banner. For this reason alone, I think the team is worth taking a bet on.

They've also already made their mark, with AI 2027. I'd gotten a sneak peek, and had actually been a bit unimpressed - I had high expectations, but imo the preview suffered from "too many cooks in the kitchen" wrt writing & site design. But by launch, AIFP had upped their game, with a polished product that's been well & widely received. It's certainly shaped how I think about the next few years of AI development. Kudos to the team for being willing to share an early v0, and then iterating to make it better over time!

I think the people working on this are super smart and probably know what they're doing, but I figured I'd throw in my unsolicited 2c:

1. It seems like the core team is already heavy on researchers, so it's unclear to me that hiring more researchers is the right strategic move, vs investing in roles that can produce great content for a wide audience. Right now their plan seems to be to partner with really great folks (eg Scott for writing, Oli for website design, Dwarkesh for podcasts), and it seems to be working so far, but I would guess that having in-house expertise on this could be super valuable, much more so than a marginal researcher.

2. Specifically with the TTX, I haven't played through one myself, but my understanding is it's currently costly to run (requiring an in-person expert facilitator). I'd be pretty excited for ways to automate that, scale it out, and get much wider distribution, eg by shipping an interactive web experience powered by LLMs, or packaging it as a commercial board game.

Anyways, AIFP is one of the most exciting efforts I'm currently tracking; I've made a small personal donation as a show of support. I expect that AIFP will be amply funded by larger parties like OpenPhil and SFF, and as Neel says, is not really in my comparative advantage; but I still think that independent donations are valuable for diversifying funding streams.

@NeelNanda Thanks so much Neel, appreciate it!

Au nom de l'ARS, merci pour ce travail qui sera fort utile !

So many good projects, but not enough money to support them all 😄 your idea sounds great I wish you good luck 👍.

I don't believe AI 2027 will be my comparative advantage as a regranter, but I think AI 2027 is great, they're an excellent place to donate money, and I wanted to put my money where my mouth is with a token donation.

I was very impressed with AI 2027. While I don't agree with all of the assumptions, and it's substantially faster than I predict, I found it scarily plausible. It was very productive for concretising my own thoughts and making me more aware of key considerations, for example, whether an AI will try to align its successor. I think this kind of writing is valuable and I would love to see more.

It also seems to have been very well received publicly (much more so than I expected), getting a ton of attention while being much higher quality than the messages that many people may have previously been exposed to. The team has an excellent track record, and I think the success of AI 2027 gives them significant momentum, in addition to Daniel's profile and positive reputation as a whistleblower who tried to walk away from large amounts of money, so it's plausible to me that they can get a good amount of public/policy attention. Though I would be much more optimistic about this if they hired someone with substantial policy/lobbying experience.

While I don't expect to agree with the team on everything, I broadly think they have good judgment, care about the correct things, and will do things that are valuable and helpful. I view this donation and endorsement as a bet on the team and their future judgment, more so than any specific future plan.

@jaiwithani Yes, that's fine!

Update: May 5th - Documentary is out

OK so this took way longer than expected to get out.

I'll post another update later detailing everything that happened since November but for now the full documentary is available to watch on X and Youtube.

Thanks again to everyone who donated! Your name should be in the credits according to your donation tier.

@CarmenCondor my bad - here it is!

So exciting, @gleech ! Is it correct that the updated report is not out yet? I tried clicking through the links here + searched on LW, but couldn't find it. (Sorry if I'm blind to the obvious!)

Congratulations on the launch of the 30 minute cut!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8zhrsLxhI

What's the overall status of the project? Is this the conclusion? Will there be future versions? I think this should be clarified, especially if the project remains open on Manifund.

@Austin Excellent! SFF got back to me and said I could apply with pending 501c3 status, but since the form still asks for an org with documentation proving 501c3 status I'm putting down Manifold for Charity and linking to the IRS determination letter, with a note about Luthien's pending status.

Would it be okay if, in the event SFF wants to issue a grant and Luthien's 501c3 status is still pending, I reach out then to confirm the fiscal sponsorship details? (If this happens, I'm totally fine with the 5% overhead.)

Description of subprojects and results, including major changes from the original proposal

The post went up roughly on time (29th December) and was fairly well-received (though it garnered less karma than last year). Comments were good and only the Alex Altair entry required notable edits. This is evidence but not strong evidence that the current version is error-free.

Our conference scrape provided some academic work which I think is underappreciated on LW but less than I hoped.

I'm very happy with the new fields (target case and broad approach) and our data entry on them.

Change: Following comments from funders we didn't do the "glossy" PDF version. Surplus money will go towards the 2025 version.

Spending breakdown

100% on salaries for the team. Thanks especially to Shoshannah Tekofsky, a highly graceful research manager.

Dear Carolina Oliveira,

Thank you once again for your thorough engagement, curiosity, and commitment to due diligence. These are exactly the kind of thoughtful questions that help refine and strengthen high-impact interventions, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide more clarity on the NeoVoltaic project and our collaboration with Tiny Hearts Technology.

NeoVoltaic is not officially fundraising on behalf of Tiny Hearts Technology. Rather, our project leverages their proven solution—Crib A’Glow phototherapy units—as a key component within a broader healthcare-energy access program we are implementing.

We are in active partnership discussions with Tiny Hearts to procure, deploy, and scale their technology in under-resourced primary health centers across Northern Nigeria, where power outages often render traditional phototherapy unusable. While Tiny Hearts is indeed receiving support directly for distribution, our role is contextual deployment, including:

• Site assessments

• Procurement through verified channels

• Renewable energy integration

• Training of healthcare workers

• Monitoring and community engagement

This means NeoVoltaic complements, but does not duplicate, Tiny Hearts’ efforts. Our added value lies in reaching marginalized and energy-deficient areas, especially where solar integration is necessary for 24/7 functionality.

Clarifying the Impact Numbers

You're absolutely right to request clarity here, and I appreciate the opportunity to clarify both our projections and the context behind the numbers:

What We Stated:

“Save the lives of over 30,000 newborns annually by treating jaundice early.”

This is a forward-looking estimate based on:

• Treating 500 newborns per year per device (based on current use data from hospitals using Crib A’Glow).

• 60 facilities × 500 = 30,000 newborns treated per year (not necessarily all at risk of dying, but at risk of complications or severe jaundice if left untreated).

• This aligns with the assertion: "Every $50 saves a newborn", since the unit cost divided by expected beneficiaries supports this.

The 550+ figure quoted on Tiny Hearts’ website is likely a conservative direct estimate of lives saved (not just treated) based on cases that would have otherwise required exchange blood transfusion or resulted in fatality. However, over 550,000 newborns have been treated with the device since its inception (a much higher number). This is reflected in more recent publications and updates from the organization.

So to be clear: 30,000 newborns reached annually does not imply 30,000 lives saved directly. Rather, it represents at-risk infants who can be treated early and effectively due to access to functioning phototherapy, thus preventing complications, disabilities, or mortality.

We are currently working with clinical advisors to fine-tune these outcome metrics with evidence-backed conversion rates from treatment to lives saved. We’re also developing an impact dashboard to transparently communicate this distinction.

On Cost-Effectiveness and Value You're absolutely right that cost-effectiveness is key. Here's a quick summary:

• Crib A’Glow unit cost: ~$360–400

• Operational lifespan: 5–7 years

• Patients treated annually per unit: 400–600

• Cost per treated infant: $0.20–$0.30

• Even if only 5–10% of those infants were at high risk of death or disability, the cost per life saved would remain extremely low and well-aligned with global benchmarks for cost-effective health interventions.

We are also preparing to:

• Collect third-party validation of impact from facilities using the units

• Track neonatal mortality reduction in each deployment site over time

• Document case studies to support qualitative understanding

The NeoVoltaic Project is driven by urgency. Northern Nigeria has some of the highest neonatal mortality rates globally, much of it preventable. A significant number of these deaths are linked to untreated jaundice, and a lack of reliable power for medical equipment is a known bottleneck.

We are confident that by pairing proven technology with targeted training, solar energy, and community mobilization, this project will deliver sustainable, life-saving impact at scale.

Thank you again, Carolina Oliveira, for asking the right questions. We value your insights deeply, and we’re committed to transparency, effectiveness, and long-term results. I’d be happy to provide further documentation, cost breakdowns, or connect with Tiny Hearts’ leadership directly if needed.

Warm regards,
Tahir Mahmood Saleh
Programs Manager | CREACCNG.ORG
📧 tahirm@creaccng.org  🌍 www.creaccng.org

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahir-mahmood-saleh-354b24146/

@ollive