Wrap Your Baby in Swaddling Gear?

To the creators of Mimo, a wearable baby monitor, nothing is more important than the safety of a newborn in the crib.

Out of that concern came a new high-tech onesie, which Carson Darling '11, Thomas Lipoma '11, Chao He '12, and Sloan MBA candidate Dulcie Madden have developed, tested, and planned for release in January.

Until now, baby monitors have been mostly cribside, with devices like intercoms and webcams keeping parents at ease. But the makers of Mimo are leveraging new tech to improve the data parents can get about their babies when they’re out of earshot.

“We've talked to so many parents at their homes, and heard about the primal feeling that many moms and dads have, of wanting to check on their babies to get some reassurance,” says Madden, the CEO. “We–and pretty much every parent–know that their baby is going to be okay, but they still lose sleep every night. We want to help parents get more sleep.”

The Mimo outfit has sensors for respiration, body temperature, and motion that report real-time data to an accompanying smartphone app. The app uses an algorithm to determine the baby’s sleep patterns, data that parents can watch from the comfort of their living room.

Working out of a South Boston office, the Mimo team has grown to include several Course 2 alums and undergraduate interns, like sophomore Robert Verkuil, who is working this term on testing and reliability for the firm, which is incorporated as Rest Devices.

Those not in the baby-monitor market can at least appreciate the marketing efforts of the Mimo team, whose endearing Meet the Founders video features siblings’ and beta testers’ children.

The team initially fundraised and is now marketing the product through Dragon, a crowdfunding site devoted to innovative projects founded by Scott Miller SM '06. From the sounds of it, Mimo is only the start of their efforts. The Rest Devices website declares, “We’re obsessed with making monitoring and data radically simple for people. Ultimately, we want every product we make to be as simple, comfortable, and accurate as humanly possible.”

While there are plenty of wearable devices for adults, from Google Glass to Samsung Gear to subway passes, this will be the first product specifically designed for infants to hit the market, reports Fast Company.