SIPPLE

The Sipple Feeding assistant  guides clinicians including doctors nurses, feeding therapists, nutritionists, parents of both premature and full-term newborns in evaluating and supporting the maturation of  feeding skills. 

14 million babies are born premature globally every year, and 80% of these preterm infants, along with 25% of full-term infants, have feeding issues. These issues often stem from weak mouth muscles, underdeveloped sucking reflexes, and uncoordinated “Suck, Swallow, and Breath” patterns. They often lead to an array of 

medical issues, such as short-term fluid aspiration, decreased nutrient intake, and increased energy expenditure, along with long-term impairments in growth, mental health, and cognitive development. These issues are even more pressing in low-income and underdeveloped communities, where a lack of appropriate guidance mechanisms for younger infants is especially pertinent (Bradford, Key Message 1). This places huge and costly demands on the healthcare system. In the NICU, a premature baby has 24/7 support. However, once home, parents, as well as pediatricians, are devoid of information as to whether their baby is feeding properly. With the steady growth in the baby tech market, parents are increasingly more interested in monitoring their babies from the digital perspective. This physical and emotional strain on parents increases the workload and cost of clinicians and therapists trying to correct the feeding problems and mitigate their long-term impact. Moreover, feeding professionals run tight schedules and are in short supply, leaving parents helpless in treating their vulnerable newborns. 

However, the Sipple Feeding Assistant is tailor-made to solve this urgent problem. It alleviates the work loads of health care professionals and parents monitoring infancy, all the while improving the quality of feeds. The medical device is a baby bottle attachment that provides professional feeding expertise from the comfort of one’s home, informing the user of the infant’s feeding performance. Fitting comfortably inside 90% of baby bottles, the Sipple Feeding Assistant tracks milk consumption and provides real time guidance to ensure proper feeding, such as pausing more often, changing the bottle’s angle, or choosing a different nipple. Data is then interpreted by both parents and feeding professionals, making for a low-cost, passive, and efficient feeding experience for all parties. 

Feeding disorders are prevelent in both preterm and full term infants and greatly impact the health and well being of children and their families.

The Sipple team is highly qualified to ensure optimal feeding for all infants. Sipple founder Dr. Caroline Martinez serves as Sipple’s scientific lead, a medical professional especially fit to streamline Sipple’s feeding solution. As attending physician at Mount Sinai,the founder of Mount Sinai’s Parenting Center, Dr. Martinez views firsthand the hardships of improper feeds and their consequential medical issues on a daily basis. Her intensive experience advising proper feeding behavior and her empathy towards parents and their infants makes her a perfect gauge for the importance of early intervention in infant feeding. 

Alongside Dr. Martinez are several seasoned medical advisors, each boasting their respective experience in understanding our device’s market. Mandi Pek serves as Sipple’s nutrition advisor, with 12 years of NICU and Pediatric experience; Joan Comrie as Sipple’s Speech and Swallowing Advisor, a Speech Language Pathologist with a focus on pediatric dysphagia; and Kickr Design as Sipple’s Engineering and Quality advisors, an engineering firm with a well-suited manufacturing facility to Sipple’s medical device. Jason St George machine learning software engineer leads the API endeavors. Moreover, over 60 specialists have signed on to Sipple’s mission. 

To meet the device's production needs, Vitaly Shlimovich spearheads Sipple’s operations. Backed by his engineering and MBA background, Shlimovich has six years of experience in MD domains, including those of the FDA-regulated environment, making his paired medical understanding and ingenuity key to giving the parents their proper feeding solution. To meet the consumer needs of our solution, Lisa Henkel heads Sipple’s marketing and finance operations. With her experience as L’Oréal’s Vice President of marketing and 25 years of experience in the field, Henkel holds much needed insights of community demand, making her 

consumer–understanding of the market space vital to Sipple’s business model

We are interested in optimizing child development by improving foundational feeding skills in all infants with and at risk for feeding disorders. 

Feeding difficulties proves a pressing issue in the world of infancy, and the current means of handling feeding issues are unsustainable. Whether it's overly high demand on healthcare workers, the high cost of feeding professionals, parents being unacquainted with proper feeding knowledge, and an absence of a ubiquitous gauge for feeding metrics, the current model for interpreting feeds is entirely inadequate, and doesn’t favor the everyday household. Feeding problems are also difficult to detect, and if left untreated, they cause neurological and developmental complications as well as a decline in cognitive abilities. Given the significant development issues that can arise, early detection is critical. 

With no other highly diagnostic, at-home infant feed monitoring product, The Sipple Feeding Assistant provides an alternative solution to feeding difficulties, one that solves the many issues plaguing the current mode of feeding evaluation. The Sipple Feeding Assistance aids healthcare workers in data collection, lessens the cost for feeding issues, provides real time guidance for feeds to parents, and fits comfortably inside a baby bottle. 

Impact Goals: 

1. (Currently) Prototype finalized 8/22.Further test the device, collect more feedback, improve initial AI. 2. (Q4/2022-Q2/2023) Targeting professionals to build trust and credibility (Pediatricians, Feeding Therapists, NICU doctors, and Nurses).  

3. (Q1/2023) Start production. 

4. (Q3/2023) Launch product in the US for preemies, where feeding issues are most prevalent, then strategically expand to non-preemies with complex medical needs and other countries for infants with at risk. 

Improved feeding metrics

Improved infant growth 

Improved infant developmental milestones

Improved family and child well being/quality of life

Appropriate nutrition is the bedrock of child survival health, and well being. Many children in low and middle income countries suffer from malnutrition despite access to breastmilk and formula. The reason for this is due to the fact that infants born premature and full term with developmental delays often have difficulties learning how to coordinate oral motor skills necessary for adequate intake. Speech pathologists who specialize in infant feeding are not generally available to help.
Using Sipple provided data, community education and engagement we hope to bring the feeding therapist to the family. 
Pilot studies have shown how infant feeding data can empower parents and clinicians to make more individualized guidelines and respond in an more supportive way to infant signals. Our model incorporates shared decision making, and empowers parents and clinicians to support health of infatns at risk and enhance early foundational mother child relationship.
 
 

Our core technology consists of multiple sensors- accelerometer , microphone, barometric pressor, time of flight combined with machine learning and  based on normative data from field studies and decades of evidence based research. 

Currently data is available for parents and clinicians for actionable consideration. 

We are an inclusive organization, humbled and amazed by the families we serve and eager to collaborate and learn from each other. 

We are business to consumer but also working with clinicians and in the process of obtaining FDA clearance for insurance/medicaid coverage

Our plan is to sell products to conusmers , raise capital to enable expansion of our services and pursue clearance for insurance reimbursement. Additionally we are interested in obtaining grant funding to expand our ability to serve preterm infants outside of the USA.

We are completely bootstraps with friends and family investment's and NYU entrepreneur contest award funding.