A teddy bear as a health monitor

Remember your favourite plushie from childhood. A panda, a monkey, a teddy bear? Either way, very likely it was your friend and it made you feel protected. Now imagine that very same soft toy being able to tell how you feel and monitor your health.

That is exactly what Croatian startup IDerma (read more about them here and here) has come up with. Teddy the Guardian is a hand-made plushed teddy bear with embedded sensors that are designed to measure a child’s vital signals, such as heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and body temperature. Every time a child touches the bear, the information is recorded and sent to the parents’ smartphone. Co-founders Josipa Majic and Ana Burica released their new product last month.

The idea behind Teddy the Guardian was born out of personal experience – “both of us received a teddy in our early childhood”, and out of their strive to develop a tool that lets parents easily monitor their kid’s health.

A practical example: Babies and toddlers are often times scared when it comes to visiting the doctor, so vital signs like heart rate are skewed. Taking the child’s data points when it is at a normal rate allows doctors to see if anything is wrong – something that Teddy can help with.

What’s ahead?

Just like their first project, Teddy the Guardian is completely bootstrapped, but the team expects to receive investments soon. “Currently the team is in the process of arranging deals with potential VC funds, strategic partners, distributors, and some of the biggest global retail chains,” Majic said.

Both the FDA and the CE have approved the sensors inside the bear, making Teddy available around the globe. “Pre-orders are arriving from different parts of the world, but mainly from the US and the EU,” Majic said. The teddies are available for 69 dollars and are expected to ship this coming October.