The quantified baby: Do parents really need infant-ready sensor tech?
The so-called quantified self movement is knocking on the nursery door. As adults rush to wrap their wrists with activity trackers and fill their smartphone screens with calorie counters, a number of new companies are trying to court them with gadgets for their most vulnerable appendages: their babies. But is all of that data really useful?
The most recent (and buzzworthy) product is a “smart diaper” from New York-based Pixie Scientific that uses camera technology and chemistry to detect when a baby might be suffering from a urinary tract infection, dehydration or other problems. The front of the diaper displays a square with colored boxes that change color when they interact with a protein, bacteria or other urine content that indicates a potential abnormality. To decode the colored patch, parents snap a picture of the diaper with a smartphone app that analyzes the color changes and returns a result.
“I was driving with my wife and daughter one day, when my wife asked if the baby had wet herself,” Yaroslav Faybishenko, Pixie’s founder, told the New York Times. “I realized she was sitting in data.”