Technology

Posted on August 14, 2017 by staff

Baby tech focus: The smart changing pad

Technology

Weight gain and loss can be a cause for concern for parents of babies, with weekly clinic visits usually the only accurate way to highlight how a little one is developing.

Hatch Baby, based in Silicon Valley, is looking to solve this by giving parents greater information on their child’s weight with Hatch Baby Grow, a changing mat with built-in scales.

The wireless smart scale tracks weight, the number of feeds, nappy changes and real-time growth data so parents know whether their baby is growing at a healthy rate.

As with many of the other products, there is an accompanying app that records and sorts this information and enables parents to compare the measurements to national averages and those of other users of the Hatch Baby Grow.

The app also encourages parents to log nap and sleep times, which can also be an indicator that they are getting enough nutrition, as well as reminding them to take a picture of their baby each day so they can chart physical progress.

Priced at $129, the pad and app also keeps parents in the loop once they have gone back to work as well as storing information to be shown to a GP, if needs be.

As with most parenting tech, Hatch Baby was born from the experience of founder and chief executive Ann Crady Weiss, who was worried about weight gain when breastfeeding her daughter.

The VC-funded start-up now aims to make a range of products aimed at making parenthood easier, including a foetal Doppler and a night light and sound machine.