Heart rate monitor sock keeps an eye on your baby’s breathing

One of the biggest fears of new parents is that their child will stop breathing while they sleep, which is referred to as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and sounds scary, but does actually cause around 2,500 death each year in the US alone.

Students at the Brigham Young University in Utah are currently working on a device that aims to take some of the worry away from new parents, so they can have a good night’s sleep as their child nods off too.

The device is called the Owlet Baby Monitor and it can be strapped to a child’s foot and once in place uses pulse oximetry in order to keep track of both the baby’s heart rate and blood-oxygen levels. The Owlet is always synced wirelessly to a smartphone, so if it detects any sudden or worrying changes, the parents will be notified straight away via a dedicated app that allows them to see realtime data. The sock itself may look a bit weird, but it’s actually been developed to ensure the baby is being monitored constantly but it’s also comfy too, otherwise it’d be kinda pointless otherwise.

Although the device isn’t available to the public yet, the team have been working on it for some time now and hope to move forward with patent applications and more advanced prototypes over the next year.

[Via Gizmodo Via Brigham Young University]