Having a new-born baby can be exciting, but also can bring its own fears for first-time parents. But this is where 2020’s next-generation baby monitor, Lumi by Pampers, comes in. Lumi is the world’s first home-in-one connected healthcare system which soft-launched just three weeks ago and officially made its public debut at CES 2020’s Unveiled Sunday night in Las Vegas. Pampers is a P&G company based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Coming into 2020, it goes without saying that providing parents, established and new, with technology that allows them to ensure their baby is well-attended to, cared for, and nourished is of utmost priority. The ability to see your newborn baby always is a must, whether you are at home or at the office.
But taking that expectation to the next level, with smart technology now comes the ability for parents to observe the sleeping habits, feeding times, and overall activity of their baby, which helps to ensure they provide a tailored rearing and development process for their baby.
This is where I came across Lumi at CES 2020: Unveiled on Monday night. Grit Daily spoke with Mandy Treeby with Lumi’s Product Marketing and Communications at Unveiled.
Grit Daily: Hi Mandy, thanks for taking time to chat with me tonight. Tell me about Lumi by Pampers. What an amazing concept. What was the inspiration behind this innovation?
Mandy Treeby: Thank you! This concept was born three-years ago; we are a start-up team.
But most importantly, we are all parents ourselves, and with our collective knowledge, we all met with thousands of other parents, teaming up with a number of pediatricians. And what we learned were three key things that led to the development of Lumi by Pampers:
#1— Parents Really Want to Know That Their Baby is Okay, Right Now
In our conversation with Treeby, she emphasized that in all of the company’s conversations with parents, they all wanted to know that their baby was being well-cared for and of course protected.
“Our app does this in a couple of ways,” she explained, showing us their state-of-the-art video monitor on her iPad. The camera is a sleek 1080p HD wide angle camera, that offers night-vision, two-way audio, room temperature and humidity tracking, and state-of-the-art encryption.
What was neat about this was Treeby was able to demonstrate a live-video feed from one of their team members’ living rooms in New York.
The Activity Sensor
“We have a state-of-the-art video monitor, which right now you are looking into the living room of one of our team members in New York. What you are seeing currently is the activity sensor on the baby’s diaper monitoring the room’s temperature and humidity, while also providing the caregiver with the ‘push-to-talk’ ability and two-way audio if you wanted to communicate or talk with your baby or other caregiver in the room.”
GD: So, this is all the result of this “activity sensor” attached to the diaper?
MT: Yes, one-hundred percent. What we’ve added to this system to make us stand out as against any other potential competitors is the ‘activity sensor’ that is on the diaper itself. We’ve tested this with thousands of babies.
GD: And this isn’t abrasive or uncomfortable for the baby to have on them? It looks like it would be, no?
MT: Great question and no! We’ve tested this on thousands of babies—no abrasions or sense of discomfort. It’s velcroid on in a way that it won’t come off because of the amount of strength, dexterity, and motion required to pull it off. Everything a baby cannot do. Try it for yourself.
(we tested it and pulled it off, and it definitely took some strength that no baby, unless a daughter or son of the gods could possibly have)
GD: Well, you weren’t kidding on it being difficult to take off for a baby. And it’s super light!
MT: Yes, that’s the point! The sensor is fully incapsulated so it can be wiped and cleaned. What’s nice is after each diaper change, you simply remove it and reattach it to the velcro on the next diaper.
GD: How long does each ‘activity sensor’ last for?
MT: So each sensor lasts for approximately three months. However, if you subscribe to the diaper, you get a free replacement each period.
The Year of Accountability: Privacy
GD: So, as an internet and technology attorney myself, I can’t help but wonder how privacy laws, such as California’s Consumer Privacy Act and GDPR come into effect with respect to the data analyzed and collected on the baby. Can you weigh in?
MT: Another great question, yes. The activity sensor is tracking your baby’s sleep and diaper 24/. So, when you think about how your baby is doing right now—we can tell you when they last slept, when they last ate, and even know the current status of their diaper—over a period. Plus, you can also see them.
For us, privacy is not something to compromise. While we are a start-up, in partnership with Pampers, we hold ourselves to the highest security standards. Any processing data we do on our end is anonymized data that helps bring you the information you want. Apart from the fact of ensuring our Terms and Conditions and the like is transparent on what we are tracking, we also provide the user/parent/caregiver with the sole ability of choosing who has access to your baby.
GD: What do you mean?
MT: You can actually control through the app you see here, who you want to assign as a “caregiver” and what level of access to the app (and to your baby) they will have. At any moment in time, you may revoke access to a caregiver, which of course, restricts their access to any information associated with your baby as well as the live-video feed.
(Treeby showed us how easy it was to add and/or remove an individual as a “caregiver” from within the app—piece of cake)
Treeby also emphasized that two-factor authentication is also integrated into the app, providing differing levels of security that meet industry standards.
“The charts and analytics you’re looking at now on my screen document your baby’s activities throughout the day. So, for example, one of our team members was a former night nurse, and when she would get home from her shift, she would take a few minutes and look at the chart to see if she had time to take a shower or take care of personal affairs, all based upon the previous night’s chart readings.”
#2—Parents Want Their Baby to Sleep and Have a Consistent Routine
The second key piece of information Treeby and fellow parents of the team learned was that parents want their baby to be well-nourished, which helps provide for a healthy sleeping pattern and consistent daily routine for child-rearing.
“Routines are very wide with babies as you know,” Treeby explained.
“What’s keeping your baby awake? Is it a bed-time thing? How much are they waking up throughout their sleep cycle? What’s the best feeding time? The chart shows you this.”
#3—You’re a New Parent. Don’t Leave Your Questions Up to Google
Finally, becoming a new parent is the most exciting and wonderful feeling. But, there’s so much to learn.
“Why not make it easy on yourself and instead of resorting to Google, which often provides you with a generic answer to your question, use a technology that knows your baby and provides you with those narrowly-tailored answers you’re looking for?”
In partnership with The Wonder Weeks, the worldwide bestseller baby development book, which explains how to stimulate your baby’s development and turning their 10 predictable, fussy phases into 10 leaps forward—Lumi by Pampers integrates the programming into its own app, giving you those leaps, narrowly tailored to your baby’s behavior.
The Wonder Weeks app, which was originally shown on The Discovery Channel, has won numerous awards, including the ‘coolest app for moms’ award, and most recently appearing in Apple’s Top Ten Best of the Year app. It is a paid app on the iTunes App Store and Google PlayStore.
However, if you are a subscriber to Lumi by Pampers, you get the entire functionality and tech of the app, free, integrated within the Lumi by Pampers app.
“Here, this partnership brings together insights into your baby’s development and the 10 development phases your baby will inevitably go through,” Treeby added. “So this helps you as a parent prepare and learn to comfort your baby—all by using the data it provides you.”
Treeby gave us the following example:
“Pretend that ‘Elizabeth’s’ bedtime is all over the place—well we would recognize that, and would tell you based off the analytics, the golden hour for her bedtime is somewhere between 7:30pm and 8:30pm—try a bedtime within that window.”
So parents, established or new, Lumi is something that can help make your child-rearing that much more ‘smart’ and tailored to ensuring your baby is always top priority.
This article is the first of many in Grit Daily’s series of CES 2020 coverage.
