In this century, being a mom has to take up a lot of obligations and expectations from society. Among one of the top concern for mothers is to make sure their babies are eating well, forming a good eating habit.
In view of this, a group of three HKUST students came up with an idea of a smart baby bottle device to ease the burden.
The invention named Bonnect is a smart infant diet tracker for measuring feeding information and providing parents with analysis of babies’ drinking patterns. It is a ring input device attaching to the bottom of a milk bottle, using Bluetooth to connect with a smart phone and make use of cloud storage for data analysis. Feeding information will then be sent to parents automatically via Bluetooth.
Bonnect is a lightweight electronic device comprising a circuit board and an electronic scale. The smart device automatically generates diagrams displaying babies’ milk intake patterns. Parents, family doctors and dieticians can view the information and keep track of the babies’ growth according to their age, weight and height, as compared with information recommended by World Health Organization.
The information generated will help assess whether babies are underweight, overweight, eating too much or too little, helping parents to choose the right infant formula that is best for their babies. The advisory system will also suggests the daily intake amount for each baby based on their individual diet and growth patterns by using Big Data Analytic, helping parents, house maids, and doctors to exchange information and decide when and what type of formula milk to feed the baby.
“Babies cannot express themselves and hence most working parents in Hong Kong worry about their babies not getting enough to eat or not eating at regular times. The device helps parents understand their babies’ drinking habits,” said team member Ko Man-ching, one of the inventors of Bonnect. “We now target to further improve the product design to fit in different milk bottle sizes and also to make it lighter in weight,” he added.
To make their entrepreneurial dreams come true, the team targets to launch the product to the market within a year.
The team won the top honor at HKUST’s Healthcare Designathon Competition in 2015.
Team members are Ko Man-ching, Year 5 student in Dual Degree in Technology and Management – Logistics Management and Engineering and General Business Management. Yuen Cheuk-ho, Year 1 MPhil student in Electronic and Computer Engineering and Tam Shih-lung, Year 4 student in Dual Degree in Technology and Management – Computer Engineering and General Business Management.
