Rigging Up Baby 117
theodp writes "Over at Fast Company, Rebecca Greenfield explores the rise of extreme baby monitoring. 'In the imminent future,' writes Greenfield, 'any curious parent with an iPhone will have access to helpful analytics, thanks to the rise of wearable gadgets for babies. Following the success of self-trackers for grown-ups, like Jawbone and Fitbit, companies like Sproutling, Owlet, and Mimo want to quantify your infants.' Devices connect to a baby via boot, anklet, or onesie, and record heart rate, breathing patterns, temperature, body position, and the ambient conditions of the room. While the breathing and sleeping alerts will calm a lot of parents, Greenfield reports the real holy grail is the data garnered from tracking, which some companies plan to share with researchers.
'We're creating the largest data set of infant health data,' says Owlet co-founder Jordan Monroe."
What happens when the App crashes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike a basic $35 baby-monitor, the $250 Owlet bootie and accompanying app can alert parents if anything serious has gone wrong, like if a kid stops breathing, or if his heart stops beating.
This XKCD [xkcd.com] comes to mind for some reason.
Babymonitor App, 4.0 stars, 4 reviews
Three five star reviews, then one one star review. "App did not warn me when baby died."
Want a slightly more serious take on it?
For the first 10 months of her life, her mother, Yasmin, kept detailed records of Elle's sleep patterns, feedings, and diaper changes, noting the data points with a pencil and paper on a clipboard. A few months in, she digitized the logs, graphed the data, and became a more knowledgeable parent.
Unfortunately for the Lucero family's sleeping habits, Yasmin never found a definitive answer. Per the data, Elle was just fussy.
That last line accurately sums up every infant I've ever had in my charge. Not sure what pattern you could discern from graphing all of this data, if my experiences are any guide it would make for one hell of a random number generator. I doubt one can find a better entropy source than a newborns sleeping "schedule". ;)
Re:What happens when the App crashes? (Score:3, Insightful)
The baby will get a life time GOP black list under there health insurance plan
Over-monitoring is problematic (Score:5, Insightful)
While the breathing and sleeping alerts will calm a lot of parents,
I would argue the opposite is more likely to happen. Most parents are not qualified to properly interpret these data, and over-monitoring can cause excessive anxiety and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
Wow, how odd (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they can then sell little baby clothes to put on your iPhone.
Re:Helicopter parents ftw! (Score:5, Insightful)
This only happens for the first kid. Subsequent kids usually don't get as much scrutiny.
Re:What happens when the App crashes? (Score:5, Insightful)
That last line accurately sums up every infant I've ever had in my charge. Not sure what pattern you could discern from graphing all of this data, if my experiences are any guide it would make for one hell of a random number generator. I doubt one can find a better entropy source than a newborns sleeping "schedule". ;)
Newborns are the most fragile thing on earth, and every parent knows it. If a device helps showing a pattern, good!
I have a two-year old daughter. From the first night, we monitored her breathing using one of those boards you put under the mattress. While this will never prevent a baby from dying, it will alert a parent when a baby has stopped breathing, so CPR can be applied and 911 called. It might just save the life of a baby. We have had a few actual alarms*, which were later attributed by the pediatrician to the low timeout on the device: it screams after 20 seconds without movement. Apparently, my little girl would sometime just stop breathing for a short while if she was in a very deep sleep. She hated the thing, and as soon as she was physically able, she would just shut the thing down on her own (quite funny to see on the cam, those little fingers slowing finding the button).
When my daughter was 6 months old, friends became parent of a baby girl. During the first night in the hospital, that girl actually stopped breathing, turned blue and was subsequently resuscitated. After a week in NICU she was released. Needless to say, our friends immediately purchased the same device that I used.
One can argue that these devices have little use other than helping parents sleep, knowing they'd be alarmed if something happens. Even if that's the case, trust me, it is money well spent. As a new parent, there are a ton of things that you'll be concerned about and this just helps easy your mind.
* The amount of alarms we've had because my wife took her out of the crib for nursing and forgot to turn the damn thing off.. Well... That's a bit higher.
Re:What happens when the App crashes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps Yasmin didn't account for all the variables.
The most obvious ones that won't show up in sleeping data is what woke the baby up.
Did it shit itself?
Was there a loud noise?
Was it hungry?
Did it get cold?
Was it too hot?
Was it sick?
Did it have reflux?
Re:What am I missing here? (Score:4, Insightful)
First, you seem to be seeing these devices as replacements for proper parenting. I'm not so sure that's what they're for. They're really just an improved version of the baby monitor, which is in turn an improved version of sleeping near the baby's room and praying you'll wake up when something's wrong. That's all. There are some bells, whistles, statistics and graphs, but it's just a fancy baby monitor, in the same way the Nest is just a fancy thermostat.
Second, there's quite a bit of literal survivorship bias in your comment. Most people you've met haven't unexpectedly kicked the bucket when they were a few months old, but that you don't know any doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The good news is that less babies die nowadays [wikipedia.org] than there used to - the infant mortality rate used to be six times as high back in the fifties. It's still too high, though, which is why we do need devices like these.
They look like cutesy cuddly turtles and nice onesies, but they're medical devices. They assist parents in the same way a baby monitor assists parents. Help the parents, help the baby, reduce the statistic. Is the decline in infant mortality only because of the baby monitor? No. But if you, like me, see it as a medical device, I hope you'll agree that everyone should get one, not only sad, lazy people that suck at parenting.
Humans have grown to adulthood for hundreds of thousands of years without heart monitors, thermometers, incubators, X-ray machines, CAT scanners, dyalisis machines and all that as well - and I don't see you suggesting to do without those.
Re:What happens when the App crashes? (Score:5, Insightful)
I could think of quite a few things that are quite a bit more fragile. Not to say that you shouldn't be careful with newborns, but I think this is going a little bit over the top, and would probably cause the parent much more stress then it would relieve. I have 3 kids myself, and personally, I even found the sound only baby monitor a little annoying.
Re:What happens when the App crashes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Newborns are the most fragile thing on earth, and every parent knows it. If a device helps showing a pattern, good!
Actually, babies are amazingly resilient. After all, they are entrusted to incompetent, clueless, self centered, young, just-barely adults, and seem to survive at alarming rates.