Evoz, an innovative baby monitoring iOS app, launched in beta this week. The app allows parents to listen to their baby from their iPhone or iPad, with another WiFi-connected iOS device also running the app as a reciever. (Evoz also offers a WiFi connected monitor as an alternate option.) An Android version of the app will be available sometime in the coming months.

Earlier this year Withings, which offers a connected blood pressure monitor for iOS devices and a WiFi-enabled weight scale called WiScale, launched its own smart baby monitoring device and app.

One of the app's main functions is alerting parents to crying children, something that baby monitors have done for decades. The difference, however, is in what the app then does with that audio; the crying is analyzed via a algorithm which knows the difference between a cry and background noise. The app makers studied the crying sounds of hundreds of children in a variety of expected real world conditions: various ethnicities, ages from newborn to one and a half, crying with music on, traffic noise and other disruptive sounds.

Currently, only audio monitoring is supported, according to an interview with Evoz CEO and founder Avishai Shoham over at VentureBeat, video support is expected to arrive in 2012.

Missy Krasner, formerly of Google Health, is advising the startup.

In an email to MobiHealthNews, Krasner wrote that "While you may not think upon first glance this is directly related to health (a new and improved baby monitor), it is -- as the monitoring dashboard can do some pretty cool things around community data and baby types of cries." That community data includes how often your child cries and when, comparing the information to previous studies. The app can then offer recommendations to improve the health and wellbeing of the child.