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Specialists do not recommend the use of wearable baby monitors.
STATES CHRONICLE – Specialists indicate that wearable baby monitors may do more harm than good. These devices meant to track the vital signs of children might create more issues than they prevent. The wearable products for babies are connected to their parents’ smartphones providing real-time updates regarding the baby’s heart rate and breathing.
Nevertheless, a new analysis concerning these monitors states that there is no evidence which attests their role, effectiveness, accuracy or safety. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Based on the analysis of the experts, these wearable baby monitors may enable unreasonable stress for parents, most likely leading to useless visits to the hospital.
Parents may become panicked due to some features indicated by the baby monitor and can drive for miles to reach a hospital to undergo unnecessary and expensive tests. Dr. Tara Narula, CBS News medical contributor, claims that companies which built such devices argued that they helped parents be more peaceful since they can continuously monitor the health state of their infant.
For example, this type of device seems to have helped the Sells. Their boy, Jordan Sell, was born six weeks before the due date. Jamie Sell, his mother, claimed that the levels of oxygen kept on decreasing during his stay in the neonatal intensive care unit. Doctors decided to connect him to several monitors, supervising him around the clock. After three weeks, he was released.
Jaime stated that they were always worried about their newborn infant believing that if he is not hooked up to those monitors, something may happen to him. They were not able to see his heart rate as they were used to see it in the hospital. Thus, they purchased an Owlet baby monitor even the NICU nurses advised them not to do it.
At first, they thought that the device would give them false alarms. But they were glad to have bought it because they felt safe knowing that their little boy is doing fine, constantly monitoring him. Owlet is one of the devices on which JAMA Viewpoint is focusing. The device can monitor the infant’s biometrics, such as oxygen and pulse rates, sending the measurements through an app to the parents’ phones. Nevertheless, Owlet admitted that there is a lack of evidence when it comes to certain products.
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