This Bear is Smarter than Teddy Ruxpin #WearableWednesday
What if a teddy bear could give your child’s health stats? Check out this special bear via TECHCocktail, which proves that the health industry is moving towards soft circuits.
On the outside, Teddy the Guardian is indeed a teddy bear. On the inside, the cute little thing is filled with sensors to track a kid’s vital signs. When a child interacts with Teddy – such as, say, hugging the bear or holding its paw (sensors are located on the bear’s arms and its stomach)- it measures the child’s heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level, and temperature. This data can then be relayed to wirelessly to any device.
“If there was a main mission for Teddy, it’s to turn a stressful experience into a kind of Disneyland experience,” says co-founder Josipa Majić. “We’re trying to make the experience [of gathering health data from children] less stressful for everyone.”
According to Majić, medical tech tends to be complicated – more complicated than necessary. There are often too many features that are too difficult to operate without guidance. Simply: the technology is not intuitive for anyone using those devices. Traditional data collection equipment in this industry doesn’t take into account how users will interact with devices.
“Nobody is really thinking about the end user and their personal experience. What we’re doing is bring[ing] it into a shape that a certain demographic [children] can actually understand.”
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