cot death technology..

conair01

hi folks im a final year student in a product design course. im proposing to design and build sum piece of technolgy to alert parents or guardians to cot death.
is there any other piece of technology out there for alerting cot death??

or your views??

all help greatly received....

Sleepy

If you mean something to detect Sudden Infant Death Syndrome you might want to take a look at the wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome

Very little is actually known about SIDS. They've identified factors which elevate the risk of the cot death and some recent research indicates that it could have something to do with Seratonin and another piece of research indicates that bacterial infections could play a part... but without knowing the actual cause, it's impossible to detect.

Unless you're suggesting inventing something to let a parent know that their child has suffered a cot-death but if that's the case, you should know that baby monitors have been on the market for quite some time.

Boom_Bap

Yeah, there is a mat that you put under the matress in the moses basket/cot that monitors the breathing of the baby. After 20 seconds of inactivity it sounds an alarm.

But for the life of me i cant remember the name of it.

Quality

I read recently that soothers/dummys, decrease the risk of cot death.

LadyE

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Yeah, there is a mat that you put under the matress in the moses basket/cot that monitors the breathing of the baby. After 20 seconds of inactivity it sounds an alarm.

But for the life of me i cant remember the name of it.

Its a baby monitor called AngelCare

Clytus

We have/had the angelcare monitor...and it worked great.
But when babs started moving around at night and curled up in the corner of the cot it doesnt pick up his movements and sounds the alarm.

Have to say...first time it went off..id say he was about 6 months..and we werent the better for it.

the glass woman

Same thing happens now and then with our 13 month old. I remember my husband and i racing up the stairs and when we got to the bedroom door he was ahead of me and i pushed him out of my way so hard i sent him flying! Having said that we do use it every night and it does give us peace of mind..

My cousins baby stopped breathing about 2 weeks ago (aged 3 weeks), the angelcare monitor saved his life, when they heard the beeps they went to his room, he was limp and unconcious...... he spent 5 days in hospital and is a perfectly happy baby once again.

Clytus

Thats brillaint whoops....thank god.
We didnt know about angelcare untill we saw it in Smyths...maybe they should have more advertisment.

thank god is right - imagine

To be honest, I was kinda freaked out by them when I had my daughter so never got one, will do next time round....

shrapnel222

the glass woman wrote: »

Same thing happens now and then with our 13 month old. I remember my husband and i racing up the stairs and when we got to the bedroom door he was ahead of me and i pushed him out of my way so hard i sent him flying! Having said that we do use it every night and it does give us peace of mind..

brilliant!! baby's fine now but hubby is in hospital!!!:D

noby

the glass woman wrote: »

Same thing happens now and then with our 13 month old. I remember my husband and i racing up the stairs and when we got to the bedroom door he was ahead of me and i pushed him out of my way so hard i sent him flying! Having said that we do use it every night and it does give us peace of mind..

Please don't take this the wrong way, but at what point are you going to stop using this (assuming you will)? I'm just curious, as while it seems a good product for a new-born, I know our eldest was very active in the cot by the time he reached 12 months.

the glass woman

noby wrote: »

Please don't take this the wrong way, but at what point are you going to stop using this (assuming you will)? I'm just curious, as while it seems a good product for a new-born, I know our eldest was very active in the cot by the time he reached 12 months.

That's a good question, which i haven't really thought about! It's just routine now..son goes down, switch goes on.. I know as first time parents it's probably seen as a bit over protective but we're not obsessive about it or anything..for example if whichever family member that's babysitting forgets to switch it on thats no big deal to us..

lostinnappies

there is a mat you place under the child which monitors movement, breathing and temp. I have considered coming up with a wrist heart monitor for babies at one stage but there is so much out there and its so expensive that I thought i wouldnt bother.

di11on

conair01 wrote: »

hi folks im a final year student in a product design course. im proposing to design and build sum piece of technolgy to alert parents or guardians to cot death.
is there any other piece of technology out there for alerting cot death??

or your views??

all help greatly received....

Well, something that alerts you before the cot death would be useful! Lol... I know that's what you meant.

Anyway - we had an angel care monitor and had the same experience as a previous poster... babs would move off the monitored area of the mattress and the alarm would go off. In the end, I think we were so traumatised by the alarm going off that it probably outweighed the benefit of any reassurance it provided.

The angel care monitor monitors sound and movement. The movement of baby breathing is enough for it to detect. When it stops sensing movement, it alarms.

My tuppence worth, if you are to design something better or something different would be to think of some way of monitoring baby in all areas of a cot or moses basket. Something robust. You don't want to be terrifying parents unnecessarily!

gubby

perhaps some form of wrist band monitor thingy?

di11on

Well that's a very good idea! Amazing it doesn't exist already!

conair01

i dont want to release to much info on the net yet but as far i can see this will be a product which will not connect to your baby and i'm hoping that it will monitor your child in all areas of the cot.

would a computer based design be a problem?

does parents have access to a computer??

Ludo

conair01 wrote: »

i dont want to release to much info on the net yet but as far i can see this will be a product which will not connect to your baby and i'm hoping that it will monitor your child in all areas of the cot.

would a computer based design be a problem?

does parents have access to a computer??

Computer based design? How would that work (without giving out too much detail)?

Sensors connected to PC in babies room? Or sensors connected wirelessly to a pc in another room? Would you need to keep a computer on all night to monitor it? Most people nowadays would have a pc at home but any system would need to be simple as a lot of people would not have the computer skills to setup a complicated system. Also the thoughts of keeping a pc running all the time to monitor a child seems overkill not to mind bad for the environment :-)

Also if you are using wireless, then some people may have an issue with exposing newborns to these signals. Don't think there is any proof that wireless signals are harmful (and I don't have a problem with it myself) but some will.

delly

I have the anglecare mat and find it very comforting, but no where on the packaging will it say that it monitors breathing, but actually monitors movement, which technically is the breathing movement if you get me. I think this is so they don't over extend themselves in there claims.

There is however proper medical devices that you can pay a good few quid for actual breathing monitoring. We used a similar one to this when babs came out of NICU, but it can't be used once baby starts to roll or move.

I have also read that soothers reduce the risk of SIDS for two reasons. One is that the sucking momentum reduces the change of baby going into a really deep sleep and the second is that it helps stop baby from burying there head into the mattress.

lostinnappies

gubby wrote: »

perhaps some form of wrist band monitor thingy?

hey that was my idea ... patencey, (scribbles some rubbish on a piece of paper) lol

conair01

as this is a very public site i'm afraid i can't give to much away!! but ludo that a gud help. cheers

Talisman

conair01 wrote: »

i dont want to release to much info on the net yet but as far i can see this will be a product which will not connect to your baby and i'm hoping that it will monitor your child in all areas of the cot.

would a computer based design be a problem?

does parents have access to a computer??

In theory you could build an audio monitor using a microphone suspended above the cot/sleep area (something along the lines of a parabolic microphone). If the microphone is focussed on that area then there should be little if any background noise to filter out. Another option is to have the microphone on the ceiling so it can pick up all sounds in the room. Filter out the background sounds and you should be left with the breathing sound of the child. You could also couple it with a thermal sensor to observe the body temperature. Device could sound the alarm when there is an irregularity detected.

Where do I submit the patent?

Dades

For the record, we've been using the Tommee Tippee monitor on our new nipper for last 5 weeks.
Great peace of mind and a doddle to use once set up.

Very occasionally goes off unnecessarily, but have learned not to panic as it's never going to be an exact science. Not sure how long we'll use it for. Maybe when we reach the stage of throwing a tennis ball at the crib to stop the beeping.

My missis insisted on having it after hearing about how it saved a "friend of a friend's baby". I was sceptical, but now converted.

First post in parenting - w00t!

run_Forrest_run

Don't take me up the wrong way here but unless these products can be proven to combat cot death then I think people are getting carried away with themselves. I have one child and yes, it is always a concern when the child is a newborn.

But can people honestly say what the true causes of cot death are in the first place and if so then we can start looking at products that aim to combat these causes, otherwise it's all tail chasing and a bit of scare mongering. Seriously, hooking up a newborn to wireless sensors??

Like any medical product for babies, the studies must be conducted and massive time & money needs to be invested in trials and tests.

Dades

run_Forrest_run wrote: »

But can people honestly say what the true causes of cot death are in the first place and if so then we can start looking at products that aim to combat these causes, otherwise it's all tail chasing and a bit of scare mongering. Seriously, hooking up a newborn to wireless sensors??

This isn't the same type of scaremongering that causes parents to not get their kids vaccinated.

So while those trials and tests try to unearth the cause of cot death, I don't see why a parent shouldn't use something that offers peace of mind at no detriment to either medical advancement, or the health of the child.

Messed Up Mind

There was a cot invented by an NCAD student a few years ago for her final year project. Natalie something... She graduated in 2006 if you want to get in contact with her some how. The basis was that the cot could be attached onto the bed so that the child was closer to the parent which apparently decreased the chance of the child suffering from cot death.

run_Forrest_run

Dades wrote: »

This isn't the same type of scaremongering that causes parents to not get their kids vaccinated.

So while those trials and tests try to unearth the cause of cot death, I don't see why a parent shouldn't use something that offers peace of mind at no detriment to either medical advancement, or the health of the child.

well I don't even want to get into the whole vaccination score mongering debacle.

But yes, of course if parents want to try something to give them peace of mind in this area by all means they are free to do so. I would just be concerned about the risk of such products lulling parents into a false sense of security. We all try to do our best for our children and we will often stop at nothing to seek out the best preventive measures possible and manufacturers of these products are aware of this.

conair01

Have you ever used a baby breathing monitor? and if so what is the procedure in preparing your child for the breathing monitor??