Wearables Makers Pitching Health Trackers For Babies

When my older son was born, we relied on a low-tech “sense of hearing” solution to track crying alerts from his crib at the other end of the hallway.

But were he born today, my son would never have settled for such pedestrian technology. Today’s discriminating newborn expects his parents to collect a wide array of data points and conduct advanced analytics on them to optimize his health.

You think this is ridiculous? Wipe that smile off of your face, you slackers. Ever sensitive to the expanding needs of today’s modern baby, wearables manufacturers have begun testing health trackers designed to monitor their tiny bodies, according to an article appearing on the CNN.com site.

In fact, there are already dozens of wearables for babies on the market, CNN found, including devices that monitor their heart rate, smart socks that track oxygen levels and a baby monitor button that snaps onto the child’s clothes. Any of these could cost a few hundred dollars. But there’s also smart thermometers and pacifiers, such as Vick’s or Blue Maestro’s Pacif-i, which start around $20 and go up from there, the site reports.

The CNN article also shares the tale of Crystal King, an Atlanta mom who’s monitoring her six-month son Avery using one of these emerging trackers.

The piece describes how using her cell phone, King can check her baby’s temperature on her cell phone and get app-driven alerts when it’s time for Avery’s next bottle feeding.

Meanwhile, if King picks up her tablet, she can also monitor her son’s breathing, body position, skin temperature and sleeping schedule. (Back in the Stone Age, I had to settle for keeping his body in position with pillow wedges and tracking his sleeping schedule using a little trick known as “staying awake.”)

As part of his work with CNN, Avery has been testing a number of different wearable devices. He seems to be a tough critic. On the one hand, he seemed pretty comfy wearing a biometric-tracking onesie while playing on his mat, but kept spitting out the smart pacifier, which was apparently a nonstarter.

Of course, we don’t actually know what Avery thinks about these devices, but his mom has developed some ideas. For example, King told CNN she thinks it would be good to help parents control the number of notifications they get from baby-monitoring apps and technologies.

If nothing else, equipping their baby with a health tracker may offer parents a little extra reassurance that their child is safe. He might still erupt in deafening screams at 3AM now and again, but if he’s wearing a health tracker, you might at least know why.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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