Sudden Infant Death Syndrome has been one of the leading causes of death in infants often associated with sleep. In the United States alone, it has already claimed the lives of over 2,500 infant deaths per year.
To address this alarming situation, EU researchers are now in the process of patenting Baby Care Sleep, an intelligent monitoring system designed to prevent any unexpected deaths in healthy infants.
After two years of research, this initiative has developed a mattress that becomes an active element in the prevention of sudden infant death syndrome. The project developed a novel, non-invasive intelligent monitoring system that can detect risky situation at an early stage, with the goal of preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), according to Baby Care Sleep.
It is integrated into a baby's mattress by integrating sensors that use biosensing textiles and matrices of sensors to identify and continuously check any significant changes in the baby's biological parameters - breathing rate, temperature, pressure and pH levels. The same sensors can also detect if there has been a drop in the infant's Oxygen level and an increase in CO2 which usually occurs when the infant stops breathing. If this happens, the specially-designed mattress then vibrates, enough to rouse the baby's brain and prompt it to breathe again.
The system is then integrated to a Risk Assessment and Actuation Algorithm that assigned the rules and thresholds as a basis for the baby's biological parameters. This algorithm also decides the level of corrective actions to take, such as the level of vibration applied within the mattress.
The company Elastic Confort is the company behind patenting a prototype for Baby Care Sleep. The company Elastic Confort is patenting a prototype of the functional System that has been tested with the collaboration of the Sleep Unit of Hospital Quirón from Valencia.
