Smart Baby-Trackers Mostly Unnecessary, Say US Doctors (bbc.com)

A group of pediatricians has called for smart health-trackers, designed to monitor babies while they sleep, to be regulated by the same US body that oversees other medical equipment. An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: The monitors, which often take the form of sensors fitted to clothing or nappies, measure signs such as heart rate and breathing during sleep. The data is shared with a phone app. The doctors spoke out after seeing babies being brought to A&E after smart-monitor false alarms. The team from the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia said the devices should be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). One brand they mentioned was Owlet, which sells a $250 monitor that tracks sleeping babies' heart rates and oxygen levels via a sensor concealed inside his or her sock. It says on its website that it has already submitted a medical version to the FDA for approval. "For most healthy babies there is not a role for home monitoring at all," said neonatologist Dr Elizabeth Foglia, one of the authors of the opinion piece published by the American Medical Association journal Jamanet.

Comments

buy it or you're a bad parent

[known_coward_69]

and you kid will die without you knowing and you will feel guilty

run out and buy it now before your baby dies

Re:buy it or you're a bad parent

[ShanghaiBill]

The monitor is not for the baby. It is for the mom. Mothers worry incessantly about their babies, and if this monitor helps them sleep without worrying as much, then it is worth the $250. Before I got married and had a kid, I never realized how much women care about their babies. It is like when you were a teenager, and you save and save and finally have enough to buy a brand new XBox. You take it home, and set it up, you worry about it overheating and check the vents every 10 minutes, you dust it twice a day, you worry about every little hum from the fan. Women care about their babies that much.

Re:buy it or you're a bad parent

[PPH]

Bought one for my kid. He just said, "F* you, dad" and went back to wrenching on his Harley.

Re:buy it or you're a bad parent

[avandesande]

Our first son literally stopped breathing 10 minutes after he was born (~10 lbs and otherwise healthy) and spent a week in ICU. We used one of these monitors the first several months. There are actually legitimate uses for these things....

Re:buy it or you're a bad parent

[TheStickBoy]

Ditto, our son stopped breathing for a short period after birth, it made us neurotic We have an Owlet and quite honestly, after the first 2 weeks or so of use I realized the Owlet is not so much for the baby, its so that WE can sleep better at night not worrying as much, by getting up every 10 minutes to check if he is in trouble.

S.I.D.S.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Cause mostly unknown.
All babies are at risk during months 2-4 whether they are healthy or not.

The Owlet works and has been worth every cent of the $250 we spent.
I would recommend the Owlet (I do not work for nor sell Owlets)

Re:buy it or you're a bad parent

[SeaFox]

While I'm sorry for what happened to your niece, you're not winning this argument any better than known_coward_69. Can either of your provide statistics for how high the risk is of SIDS? The parent poster is correct in there is a certain level of playing to fear and baiting helicopter parents to make sales here.

Re:buy it or you're a bad parent

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, there are cases to be made for all of these sorts of monitors. For example, I see no problem with parents of mentally challenged children who give the kid a GPS to wear so that they can track the kid if he/she happens to wander off.

The grouse I have is the idea that each and every one of us should be using these at all times with our children--just in case. Some of this comes from companies that take a few dollars worth of parts, put something together for a few hundred dollars, with little-to-no quality testing against a false positive. They then sell it to some parent who attaches it to their kid and then ends up rushing their kid to the ER once a month because the monitor said that they have an irregular heartbeat when it's actually just the monitor that is screwed up.

Re:Or they just straight up dont work

[PPH]

Did you try turning the baby off and then on again?

Re:Peace of mind and easier sleep

[JoeMerchant]

Or, you could co-sleep like humans and pre-humans have done for literally millions of years right up to the advent of the split floorplan.

On a serious note, there are some infants who need this - not many, but the old "back to sleep" campaign improved, but did not stop, SIDS.

Re:Technophilia run amok

[AdamThor]

Look. These "Smart Babies" are dangerous. Regular babies will cry all night and keep their parents up, but when you combine this lack of diurnal schedule with the cunning intelligence of "Smart Babies" you'll have infants crawling out of bed, hatching plots in the middle of the night! Looking for the cookie jar, wandering outside, making off with the silver! Stealing the breath of the family cat!

Smart babies must be monitored! Won't somebody think of the babies?!

Yes

[raymorris]

>> When the baby finally falls asleep, most parents *WANT TO* do one thing - go to sleep

> Do you also fall asleep at work?

Several times when she was small, yes. Sometimes drooling on the keyboard, sometimes on the floor, with the pillow I brought to the office. Sometimes I took a vacation day to sleep during work hours.

> What about if the baby falls asleep in the back of a car, does the car suddenly swerve off the road and into a tree?

Rumble strips saved us more than once. Twice we unexpectedly woke up in the parked car, when we didn't make it out of the car after arriving at our destination. A few times we intentionally slept in the parking garage, because taking her out of the car might wake her up.