UK company to offer temperature sensing baby pacifier

By Jonah Comstock
08:36 am
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smart pacifier bluemaestroUK-based BlueMaestro has put a new spin on health monitors for babies. The company offers parents a dishwasher-proof smart pacifier, which has a built-in temperature sensor that will track their babies' temperature over time.

“I know first-hand the difficulty in taking a sick baby’s temperature," co-founder Kristin Hancock told the Bluetooth SIG blog earlier this month. "It is easy to lose track of readings and the timings of medication, so it becomes harder to determine whether the medication is working. Pacifi makes this easier, tracking the temperature and effect of the medication so parents can feel more at ease during this worrying time.”

The pacifier, which has recently been announced to the public, transmits information to the parents' iOS and Android devices through Bluetooth Smart and a companion app. Parents can also use the app to record when medicine was administered to their child and set up alerts and reminders if they need to keep track of their baby's schedule. The app can record and store temperature and medication information, which the parents could then share with a doctor. The app also can sound an alarm if the baby's temperature passes a certain threshold.

The app can alert parents when the child (or the pacifier) gets a given distance away from the phone. If the child loses the pacifier (an all too common occurrence), a button on the phone can trigger a buzzer alarm. The battery in the pacifier lasts for one year, according to BlueMaestro.

This is the company's second product. Its first, called Tempo, is also a Bluetooth-enabled thermometer, but intended for environmental, rather than medical use. Pacifi is not yet available for purchase either in the US or the UK, and BlueMaestro does not appear to have FDA clearance at this time.

Pacifi joins the ranks of at least two other smartphone-connected thermometers intended for use by parents. Raiing Wireless, a Chinese company, received FDA clearance for a body thermometer in 2012. The device, now going by the name iThermonitor, is worn under a baby's armpit and provides remote monitoring. Another company, Kinsa, manufactures a low-cost thermometer that uses the smartphone's electronics. The company's end goal is to provide a real-time health map based on crowdsourced readings from Kinsa thermometers.

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