Innovation in premature infant care
Utilizing patented technology developed at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, smallTalk® is on a mission to bridge the gap between babies in the NICU and exposure to their mothers and families’ voices. With published research, their team has demonstrated how a caregiver’s voice not only improves NICU baby’s comfort and stability but also has the power to improve neurobehavioral and language scores down the road.
smallTalk looked to the Design Central team to develop an environmentally safe device to help babies receive the much-needed comfort, stability, and brain development power encased in a mother’s voice.
Client
- smallTalk®
Industry
- Healthcare
Capabilities
- Product Design
- Engineering
- Prototyping
Objective: Design an easy to use, clean, and safe infant speaker for maternal voice therapy.
Meeting the needs of the environment
The NICU is a highly controlled and sensitive environment. Aware of overstimulation, hard-to-clean areas and materials, and how clinicians might interact with the device, Design Central investigated an ideal solution to eliminate elements of risk. Through a comprehensive design, prototyping, and engineering journey, Design Central and the smallTalk team developed a design that achieved functionality and safety. The smallTalk Connect speaker, designed with these tiny patients in mind, utilizes infant-specific variables to play at an infant-safe decibel level and duration, can be sanitized easily, and turns off independently. In addition, the look and feel plays an important role in market acceptance.
“The right aesthetic driven by the Design Central team helps imply the quality and trust associated with the Connect,” – smallTalk Co-Founder and CEO
Introduce an active element
Beyond stability and comfort, the smallTalk team aimed to demonstrate that babies experience increased brain development when they actively engage with their mother’s voice with a sensor-equipped pacifier.
Design Central helped smallTalk develop the small sensor device that fits into a disposable NICU pacifier. The Bluetooth-enabled sensor communicates suck strength to the speaker during a therapy session with the premature baby, providing contingent voice exposure. This version of the product is called Connect Active. Read more about the Connect Active and the clinical study here.
Preparing for a staged rollout
In addition to building the clinical study units, Design Central managed the development and production of the first round of units for a staged rollout of the Passive Connect speaker in pilot NICUs across the country.