Tech companies have embarked on joining forces with parents by creating wearable devices to track, foster and monitor the growth and development of their children from cradle to the pre-adolescent stage. Some of these devices also have been created to give parents peace of mind about the whereabouts of their children.
Below are a few examples of how this trend is taking over the wearable tech industry:
The Owlet Smart Sock is a little boot that tracks the oxygen levels and heart rate of a sleeping infant, this assists the parents in gauging whether something is not right with their baby. Besides tracking the new infants well being, this device gives first time parents peace of mind. For those who are not comfortable with the boot, there are other brands that have created devices that monitor similar things: MonBaby’s sleep position and breathing monitoring button (attached to the baby’s onesie) and Baby Vida’s oxygen level monitoring sock.
Kiddo’s Wellbeing Monitoring App and Band
The Kiddo Wellness and Health app and band, was created for parents to collect data from their children which enables them to make informed decisions based on the collected insights around their health and wellbeing – especially in the case of an unexpected illness. The wristband uses machine learning technology and collects information about the child’s skin temperature, heart rate, sleep, activity, perspiration levels and nutrition. All this information is fed back to the app on the parent’s phone if anything abnormal is detected; bringing individual health surveillance, even for young people, closer to home.
UNICEF’s Kid Power Band and App
The UNICEF Kid Power Band was created to encourage children to be more active and to also learn how to give back to other less privileged children in the world. The Kid Power initiative was created to tackle the global problem of one in every four children around the world being malnourished, while one in every four children in American are being active. . The power band and app track the steps and/or activity of a child which is converted into power points that help them earn and distribute UNICEF therapeutic food packs containing a protein and vitamin-rich peanut paste to children who are malnourished around the world. There are also other rewards based activity trackers: Garmin’s Vívofit jr. activity band , which rewards children with a virtual currency and Nabi’s competitive bands, which encourages children to compete with friends/ siblings to complete certain goals (calorie or activity) and earn virtual coins to purchase virtual pets etc.
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t Tumelo
Tumelo Mojapelo is a silent force behind the scenes at Flux Trends, and steers the direction of the content created by the Flux Trends Team. Her interest in trends analysis emanates from her desire to want to give people opportunities to do, think and act better – to make better decisions because they understand the connections between seemingly unrelated factors and phenomena.
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Image credit: The Starling AND Wareable AND Kiddo AND UNICEF USA
Video credit: Owlet Care AND Cool Kickstarter Projects AND UNICEF USA
