Every now and then, there comes are an article which falls outside my comfort zone. In the past, I wrote about Natural Cycles, a smart birth control system which measures ovulation cycles using temperature. I’m going to step back outside my comfort zone and try to explain Coro; a smart breastfeeding measurement system. I know nothing about breastfeeding, but I do know a bit about tech solving very real problems.
The Coro has just been accepted into Google’s 2019 Adopt A Startup Program. Here’s what it does.
Why Do We Need Smart Breastfeeding?
Coro is the brainchild of Rosanne Longmore, who spotted a gap in the market when her friend, and new-mum, Dr Helen Barry gave birth to an underweight son. Weighing just five pounds, weight gain for her newborn was crucial. For Helen, it was quite a stressful time. The only way to measure progress was through infrequent weigh-ins which only took place weekly. That left a lot of time for worry and even weighing after meals were wildly inaccurate. Her husband Jamie has coincidentally also started working on measurement of flow for a completely different project and between the two of them. Rosanne has listened to the two and had a eureka moment, giving birth (pardon the pun) to Coroflow.
What Does Coro Do?
Regardless of whether you’re a man or woman, you can appreciate nipples get sensitive. The only difference is unless you’re a breastfeeding mother, you probably don’t understand just how sensitive nipples can get. For this reason, when breastfeeding, women may opt to wear a nipple shield. The Coro is a nipple shield, but also a very smart piece of wearable tech.
The Coro, while protecting breastfeeding mothers’ nipples, also measures the volume of milk that is passing from breast to baby. While I’ve outlined the example earlier of an underweight child, there are countless instances where a mother may wish to measure how much milk is being consumed.
This is made possible by the tech in the Coro and the smartphone app which this device pairs with. The Coroflo companion app will let you know how much your baby has been feed, tracking each breast separately. You can also track this data over time and even compare to similar babies based on age through shared anonymised data housed in the cloud.
Peace of Mind for Breastfeeding Mothers
Breastfeeding isn’t for all mothers, but research has shown it’s the best for baby. According to the people behind Coro, it’s also often beneficial to mother, baby, society and the environment, bringing nutritional, immune system, developmental, psychological, social, economic, and environmental benefits to the table.
Yet, women often stop breastfeeding early, fearing they are not providing enough milk for their newborn. The Coro from Coroflo provides an accurate and scientific way for breastfeeding mothers to ensure baby is well fed.
The Coro from Coroflo will launch in Ireland soon. You can follow Coroflo’s progress in the Google Adopt A Startup Program by following them on social.
Google Adopt A Startup Program
Every year, Google adopts a selection of startups and provides them with access to the knowledge and experience required to help them grow. When they complete the program it comes down to a battle to the death; not literally of course. Each startup will have the chance to pitch their own unique growth plan to a panel of select judges. The prizes up for grabs include €10,000 in Google Ads credit and eligibility for the Google Cloud Programme which includes $100,000 in Google Cloud Credit.
The 15 companies selected for the Spring Adopt a Startup Programme are; Allergy Lifestyle, Vrai, Change Donations, ConstructionBOS, Coroflo, Danalto, EdgeTier, FarmHedge, Limtz, Moby, PepTalk, RideShair, SureSitter, Teemie and Wrkit.
