$500 TEDDY BEAR teaches tots to spit up personal data

Babies can now enjoy the thrill of wearable health monitors, as well as giving away their personal data for free, thanks to the arrival of a $499 teddy bear called “Teddy The Guardian”.

You read that right: the teddy's price is just one dollar shy of five hundred. You're paying the big bucks for the bear's “smart paw” that little ones reach out and lovingly squeeze in in order to record their heart rate, oxygen levels, and body temperature.

Just four seconds of loving hand-holding is required to measure those vital signs, which are of course beamed to a smartphone app so parents can fret more quickly and in a more informed fashion using the latest technology.

There's also a “glowing heart that is linked directly to the sensor and beats at the same rhythm as your child’s heart. If your young ones temperature changes, Teddy’s heart changes colour, giving you instant visual feedback of your child's well being".

Any first-time parent-to-be can tell you that the baby-kit industry has only to raise the possibility of safety for domestic budgets to be multiplied by whatever it takes to ensure a new arrival never, ever endures less-than-optimally-non-dangerous anything.

Teddy the Guardian's makers have cranked that sentiment up to 11 and possibly beyond, suggesting that conventional recording kits stress tots and therefore produce false readings.

The bear does better, its inventors claim, because it operates “much like a mother's soothing touch ... [to] ... provide parents with more accurate, consistent and reliable data points that will give a meaningful and complete insight in the child’s health condition.”

Awwww .... cute! Baby's first data dump

“This interactivity and connection shared between the two hearts marks a significant step towards a more humanised approach to technology in healthcare that we believe kids around the globe deserve.”

Well, that's told us.

Teddy's inventors say they've banked over $700,000 in pre-orders and will put some of that cash towards a donation of 100 bears. Once those ship, the rest of us can order one for $499.

Teddy's obviously a piece of clever kit: it gives kids a reason to hand over data that today is only yielded after bribes of sweet treats. As such it accustoms even the very young to the user-generated “you are the product” dystopia we've all come to love so much, bringing The Zuckerberg Hegemony just that little bit closer. ®