{"id":79664,"date":"2017-01-02T08:30:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T07:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e52.nl\/?p=79664"},"modified":"2017-01-02T08:30:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T07:30:13","slug":"hugsy-high-tech-in-a-baby-blanket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/hugsy-high-tech-in-a-baby-blanket\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugsy: High Tech in a baby blanket"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very carefully, Sylvie Claes walks into a baby room of the Maxima Medical Center. It\u2019s the first time she sees \u2018her\u2019 Hugsy being used. In the bed in front of her lies a mother with on her chest a premature baby wrapped in a blanket. The blanket helps to build a bond between the mother and the incubator baby. Because the mother can\u2019t always be in the hospital with her newborn baby, Claes and her team members have created Hugsy. By putting the scent of the mother in the fabric and through a special speaker that simulates the mother\u2019s heartbeat, the baby has the feeling that she\u2019s always around. \u00a0Hugsy simulates and makes <\/span>kangeroo care <\/span><\/i>easier. Kangeroo care is a way of taking care of premature babies, the idea behind it is that babies develop better and faster when they\u2019re held skin to skin by the parents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is very special to see something you created more than a year ago, being used. <\/i><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

With a tilted head, Claes watches the baby and the mother. She deliberately keeps some distance, but the mother reassures her and beckons her to come closer. She enthusiastically tells about the use of Hugsy. \u201cI really believe that the scent and the heartbeat are doing something for the baby.\u201d Claes nods, and all she can do is smile. She\u2019s a little overwhelmed after the visit to the mother and the baby<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>\u201cIt is very special to see something you created more than a year ago, being used. It is such a small baby, you come very close. I felt like some sort of intruder, these are intimate moments in the personal space. I felt like I didn\u2019t belong there, but the mother was extremely cool.\u201d Claes smiles proudly. \u201cIt was surely different from a doll.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Claes hopes to give a professional sequel to something that started as a study assignment. She\u2019s participating in the accelerator program of HighTechXL together with her team members\/fellow students Miquel Cabral Guerra, Jiachun Du and Lisa Malou Smits. \u201cI am the only one who\u2019s working full time in our team, the others are primarily focussing on finishing their course.\u201d She chooses this step consciously: \u201cDuring a business class I used Hugsy as a case to make a company out of it. I soon had the feeling that this could become something successful. So why wouldn\u2019t I give it a shot? And I haven\u2019t had any regrets, because the past two months I have already learned more than I ever did at school.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are now only in our startup phase and we\u2019re already doing clinical trials.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"_DSC0099<\/a><\/p>\n

Gesticulating, Claes continues: \u201cAnd do you know what\u2019s also a big convenience? We are now only in our startup phase and we\u2019re already doing clinical trials. What other medical startup can say that? The feedback you receive is very instructive, you don\u2019t only hear about the experiences from working with Hugsy from nurses, but also from mothers. It can\u2019t get much better.\u201d From all sides she receives well-intentioned advice: \u2018try something with the voices.\u2019 Or: \u2018give the mother live feedback at her home about how the baby is doing.\u2019 Claes shrugs: \u201cyou can obviously be as creative as you want, but the live feedback will probably give the mothers extra stress. Sometimes the baby\u2019s heartbeat rises or drops a lot, but that doesn\u2019t have to mean anything. From the hospital we receive the advice to keep it simple. We agree with that.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"2016_JiachunSylvieMiguelLisa_TheHugsyblue_3600_3600\"<\/a>The blanket consists of a set of comforting tools, the blanket with the scent of the mother, supporting pillows and the heartbeat-speaker. There is also a special opening in the blanket for all the wires of the incubator. The question about how the scent is put into the fabric makes Claes laugh. \u201cPeople always think it\u2019s all very high-tech, but it\u2019s really very old-fashioned. It is a cotton cloth and the mother sleeps with the blanket so that it can absorb her body scent. It\u2019s simple, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Claes, the pillows in combination with the blanket come in handy for the nursing in the hospital, because this way nurses can lay down the baby in a certain way that makes washing, for example, less hard. It also makes moving the baby in and out of the incubator a lot easier. This way premature babies don\u2019t have to be taken out of the incubator naked. Claes is enthusiastically gesturing it all with her hands. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame I can\u2019t show it to you, the prototype is being used in the hospital.\u201d Hugsy also has a pain relieving effect due to the pressure the pillows exert on the baby\u2019s body. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like getting a hug from their mother.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We are still looking for someone to reinforce our team, someone that brings the hardware to the next level<\/i><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"2016_JiachunSylvieMiguelLisa_TheHugsyswaddeling_1800_1800\"<\/a>There is enough room for improvement, Claes is looking for a way to shape the heartbeat speaker in a different way and produce it so that it is ready for mass production. \u201cNow the mother is recording the sound when she is relaxed, it then goes into the speaker. The vibrations of the sound \u2013 which we can\u2019t hear, but the baby can \u2013 makes the heartbeat of the baby more or less coincide with the mother\u2019s heartbeat, that\u2019s called <\/span>co-regulation. <\/span><\/i>We are going to have to develop the speaker further, that\u2019s why we are still looking for someone to reinforce our team, someone that brings the hardware to the next level.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Through contacts in the MMC, Claes and her team end up at HighTechXL. Sidarto Bambang Oetomo is a paediatrician and professor at the TU\/e, where Claes is a student. Oetomo and his son are the founders of <\/span>Bambi Medical<\/span><\/a>, which participated in the previous round of the accelerator program. He was also very excited about the high tech blanket and adviced Claes to pitch at HighTechXL. \u201cIt all went very fast. We are really lucky with these contacts, we\u2019re close with Bambi Medical, they are helping us with their networks and knowledge in the medical world. We are grateful for that.\u201d \u00a0The Maxima Medical Center is also <\/span>pushing innovation in the hospital<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hospitals in America are afraid of claims by parents when something goes wrong.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"2016_JiachunSylvieMiguelLisa_TheHugsycircuit_1800_1800\"<\/a>In America \u2013 Claes is half Belgian, half South African, but lived in America for ten years \u2013 everything is boarded up, according to Claes. Hospitals are afraid of claims by parents when something goes wrong. \u201cMoreover, the culture there is much more conservative. Hospitals are busy saving lives, that\u2019s the primary task. Hugsy is \u2018soft\u2019 care and gives more comfort. In the Netherlands they are much more open to that, parents are being listened to. And in the MMC they are not scared to test new products, it is a smaller market. But a very instructive one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time <\/span>kangeroo care <\/span><\/i>was widely applied was in Bogot\u00e1, Colombia in the 80s. When there weren\u2019t enough incubators available and a lot of babies were dying, until kangaroo care was applied. \u201cIt is a dream to one day do something for countries where the facilities are not as good as they are here. I am not in it for the money anyway, although we do obviously need money in order to develop further. But I am doing this because I want to improve life with my design. Kangeroo care has its origin in those areas, it would be fantastic if I could give something back one day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very carefully, Sylvie Claes walks into a baby room of the Maxima Medical Center. It\u2019s the first time she sees \u2018her\u2019 Hugsy being used. In the bed in front of her lies a mother with on her chest a premature baby wrapped in a blanket. The blanket helps to build a bond between the mother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":79021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[490,825,4692,9153,484,827,829],"location":[],"article_type":[],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[],"class_list":["post-79664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability-nl","tag-design-en","tag-high-tech-campus-en","tag-high-tech-xl","tag-hugsy-en","tag-innovation","tag-start-ups","tag-technology"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Bart Brouwers","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/brewbart\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Screen-Shot-2016-10-28-at-5.40.59-PM-1-300x147.png","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Sustainability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Sustainability<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["design<\/a>","High Tech Campus<\/a>","High Tech XL<\/a>","Hugsy<\/a>","innovation<\/a>","start-ups<\/a>","technology<\/a>"],"unlinked":["design<\/span>","High Tech Campus<\/span>","High Tech XL<\/span>","Hugsy<\/span>","innovation<\/span>","start-ups<\/span>","technology<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 9 years ago","modified":"Updated 9 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on January 2, 2017","modified":"Updated on January 2, 2017"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on January 2, 2017 8:30 am","modified":"Updated on January 2, 2017 8:30 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=79664"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=79664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}