Jonathan Harris, president and incoming CEO of Owlet
Photo courtesy of Owlet
Publicly traded baby monitoring company Owlet is expanding its smart baby monitoring lineup with the launch of Dream Sight and its next generation of Dream Duo, building on its existing Owlet Cam and wearable sock.
Jonathan Harris, president and incoming CEO, sat down with MobiHealthNews to discuss the company's new offerings that aim to give parents a more complete view of their child's sleep and development, as well as AI-driven insights into peer comparisons and sleep scores.
MobiHealthNews: Tell me about your role at Owlet.
Jonathan Harris: So, I've been at Owlet for just over two years now. I am currently president but am transitioning to CEO. I'm driving the whole company today, but I officially transition Oct. 1. So, I'm effectively in the seat, in the CEO hot seat.
MHN: Owlet announced Dream Sight and Dream Duo. The company already has the Owlet Cam. What's the difference between the Owlet Cam and Dream Sight?
Harris: We believe that having a camera in addition to our sock really helps families provide the most accurate view and interaction of their child and the child's development, because you get all the amazing content from the sock and the data that it provides, but parents really want to see and understand what's happening with their children as well. Are they sleeping? Are they moving? What position are they in?
We really felt that having a next-generation camera that provided better visibility, easier setup and easier access was really core to our evolution as a business and a brand to build our relationships with our families.
MHN: What will the camera offer?
Harris: The setup on the new camera is much easier. New parents don't need the hassle of ... you know, having to set up IoT [internet of things] devices is hard enough as it is. So we wanted to make sure that out of the box, a parent could walk through and easily – one, two, three – connect this camera and this device, it's going to have better visibility as well, higher 2K, which can provide better visibility to what is happening with your child and also better nighttime visibility.
We're going to have more software features rolling out as well. So, we'll have better software features that we can start to roll out, because it's a next-generation camera, it has more memory and we're going to be rolling out more and more features as we continue to evolve, and that will tie it back into Owlet360 to provide a more comprehensive view for the family of what's happening with their child and their development.
MHN: How do you ensure privacy within the cameras and that they cannot be hacked?
Harris: We've done a lot of work on privacy. We're working on it even deeper, but yeah, this camera is super secure, and we're working on even more enhancements to make it more secure.
MHN: Tell me a little bit about next-generation Dream Duo.
Harris: I'm super excited about the Dream Duo, specifically because I think that the power of the sock plus the camera is just amazing. We can truly share with a parent everything that's happening in the crib.
So, all the data we are collecting - the pulse oximetry, the accelerometer, the movement - we have all of that on the sock, coupled with the camera, that gives a parent a complete solution of what's happening with their child when they are in that crib.
MHN: Is there AI within these products?
Harris: We're developing AI features for sure and really helping parents understand what's happening.
Because we have the world's largest pediatric health platform, we are able to take our AI and apply that to drive more insights and innovations and tips and tricks for families to help them on their journey.
MHN: What kind of insights are you able to garner from the data?
Harris: One is like, how's your sleep score? You know, super simple, like that. But how are you driving your sleep score when the child wakes up in the morning?
We can also do predictive, such as starting to look at how your child is sleeping. We have a digital sleep coach to help families get their child to sleep a little bit longer. So, if you think about that, from a new parent, an extra hour to sleep per night is just magic and completely priceless.
With our dataset, we can also help predict or show the families how their child is doing amongst a larger peer group.
One thing that is super exciting about the subscription that we rolled out in January is that 93% of our parents would highly recommend this subscription to other parents. We're really starting to see that word of mouth drive amongst parents, because new parents always talk to new parents, and we're really building that relationship in that parental community. We really believe that will help grow this community and really build out a stronger community among parents in the Owlet family.
MHN: How do your partners, like Amazon, Target, Walmart and others, influence what Owlet releases?
Harris: Well, we have our own channel too. So, we're really listening to what parents are looking for, and we want to build products and services that they are looking for that can help make their lives easier, healthier and happier.
Between our retail partnerships, which we love – we love Target, we love Walmart, we love Amazon, we love Babylist – we're getting good insights, but it is really our own feedback with our own channel, and that's the nice part about our devices is that all of our devices are directly connected so that anytime a new parent creates an account, we have a direct relationship with that parent.
We're understanding how they're using the product, what they are doing with it, and we reach out and say, "Hey, what are you looking for? What would you like to see?" We have a really strong relationship with our families, and we're listening to them, and that's driving our roadmap.
