Do you worry about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) or your baby’s sleeping habits? Many parents do! Perhaps you’ve bought baby monitors that monitor the heartbeat of your baby to give you peace of mind. Well now there is a new wearable technology called the Sproutling Baby Monitor! Created by a new company called Sproutling, the monitors tracks heart rate, sleep patterns and temperature of your baby!
Sproutling uses sensor-driven technology so that parents get the insight into the sleeping patterns of their bundle of joy! The technology is worn around the infant’s ankle and comes with a charging dock with a user interface and an application for your phone or tablet. New Deal Design, the agency that built Fitbit, also built the Sproutling.
The device is washable and waterproof and is soft for baby’s ankle. It has sensors built into it that take information about baby’s heart rate, skin temperature, movement and noise. It also has a Bluetooth and a battery.The only downside is that this device must be worn on babies 6 months or older and so isn’t applicable to newborns.
1,000 data points per minute are captured then transmitted to the app where parents can see their baby as a flickering light. It tells parents when their baby wakes up or even has a fever. It uses statistical information to create predictions as to when their baby will awaken. It also tells parents what the best sleeping environment will be for their baby.
What if you have twins? Sproutling’s app can track more than one child. You simply need more bracelets. Each child is colour coded to make tracking easier.
The Sproutling has been designed with anxious parents in mind! For one, the band can be fastened and unfastened with one hand so you can carry your child in the other. When its time to change baby’s nappy, simply pick up your baby, unfasten the band and put it on the charging dock and away you go.
Another parent friendly aspect is the application. It uses pictures rather than numbers. Most parents don’t know how many beats-per-minute their baby’s heart should be beating so a picture lets them know if baby is okay or not! This reduces stress! Multiple Sproutling-wearing babies are also colour-coded to keep things easy. It will simply say ‘okay’or ‘not okay’on the screen at all times. Very easy!
Bruce and co-founder Matthew Spolin, went to paediatricians and OBGYNs to explain their concept. Doctors were eventually won over by the idea because of the simplicity of the application. Parents don’t understand that heart rate fluctuates or that it changes over time so the idea of creating pictures to let parents know their child is okay or not was beneficial. Doctors are now advisors to Sproutling
New parents “grew up with a smartphone in their pocket, so they’re looking for technology to solve their problems,” Spolin says. “We’ve worked hard to make it not look like technology,” Bruce says. Sproutling has avoided using gender specific colours to cater to the new technologically savvy parent.
The Sproutling Baby Monitor is the first product of a line of products they are developing for parents. It will retail for $299 (£178), but can be pre-ordered at an early-bird price.
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