It was earlier this year, in the early days of the pandemic, that the three-women team behind Raybaby, an IoT (Internet of Things) based baby monitor, realized that their device could be used to track the respiratory rate of covid-19 patients and provide vital data to doctors about treatment and prognosis.

Raybaby, which was launched at the prestigious American tech conference CES in 2017 (and was a finalist in the 2019 CES in the Baby Tech category), was developed as a high-tech baby monitor by three Bengaluru-based engineers: Aardra Kannan Ambili, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientist, Ranjana Nair, a computer science engineer specializing in gesture-based technology, and Sanchi Poovaya, a mechanical engineer. The Raybaby is based on advanced radar and motion sensor technology and is different from regular baby monitors (which are usually simple camera devices) in that it is able to capture the baby’s breathing rate and analyse the breathing pattern.

The device is currently being used by doctors at HCG hospital in Bengaluru in the COVID-19 ward. The Raybaby team has developed an app for use by medical professionals that gives them a dashboard to monitor patients under their care using data from the device. “If the breathing rate of a patient goes over a particular threshold, the app sends a notification to the doctor’s phone, alerting them that they need to check on the patient. It significantly reduces the burden on medical teams,” explains Ambili. Since covid-19 is a disease that aggressively attacks the respiratory system, tracking the respiration rate is an important way to monitor the well-being of patients.

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