Building a Better Breast Pump_0
At the close of a hackathon held at the Massachusetts institute of Technology this weekend, tables were littered with the standard fare: empty coffee cups, LEDs, joysticks, and transistor parts. There were also scraps of fabric decorated with elephants, foam models of women’s breasts and flanges. Lots of flanges.
For the uninitiated, the flange is a crucial part of a breast pump, a device that help nursing moms extract milk from their breasts. Shaped like a broad funnel, the flange (or “shield”) forms a seal around the breast during pumping, helping maintain a vacuum. The flange is also the subject of numerous complaints by pumping women, which were printed and taped to a wall at the event: “Too rigid;” “Hard to adjust;” “Doesn’t work with gravity;” “Weird-shaped cones which don't look anything like a baby's mouth.” Improving the flange was just one part of the hackathon’s broader goal of making the breast pump suck a little less.
The World Health Organization for the first two years of a child’s life; the American Academy of Family Physicians recommends it for at least the first year. While breastfeeding rates are on the rise—79 percent of newborns start on breast milk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s —less than half of those babies are still breastfeeding at six months.
Sticking with breastfeeding is difficult for a lot of reasons. The shape of the baby’s palate can make latching on difficult if it doesn’t match up well with the shape of the mother’s breast, notes Boston-based nurse and lactation consultant Nancy Holtzman. Relatively minor issues, like jaundice, can disrupt breastfeeding and jump-start a formula-focused diet. But babies are born with several breast-feeding friendly reflexes, Holtzman says, such as suckling, which develops while still in the womb, and the unfortunately-named “rooting reflex,” which helps the baby seek out the nipple. Given the innate qualities in babies that are pro breast-feeding, and the innate physiological trait of female mammals to lactate after pregnancy, designing a smarter breast pump should be a tractable problem.
Breast pump materials spread out on a table during the hackathon (Rachel Ehrenberg)“The breast pump is a key technology in extending the nursing relationship and providing babies with breast milk for longer. But most women will tell you that the experience of using the breast pump sucks, literally and figuratively,” notes Catherine D'Ignazio, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab with a background in data visualization, arts, and software development.
Granted, consumer breast pumps are relatively ; the first pump that wasn’t intended for hospital use was introduced in 1991. But plenty of technologies that were born later than the breast pump have had much speedier evolutionary trajectories. In May, after reading that called out this lag in innovation, D'Ignazio helped organize a small group of engineers, public health professionals, designers, lactation consultants, entrepreneurs, and parents to hack the pump. It quickly became clear that there was room for improvement. The working group then organized a second hackathon and upped the ante: A first place prize of $3000 and a trip for two to Silicon Valley to pitch the winning idea to venture capitalists.
In an online created before this weekend’s event, cumbersome flanges were one of many complaints lodged by breast pump users. Frustration with pumps’ numerous parts came up repeatedly, as did the fact that pumped milk is collected in bottles situated close to the breast, making it impossible to throw on a shirt and go about one’s business while pumping. There were calls for basic self-diagnostics, such as the pump equivalent of a “check engine” light so the pumper doesn’t mistakenly assume she’s no longer making milk when the pump isn’t working. References to feeling like a cow were ubiquitous. And many posts pointed to the “wheezy pumping noise” (also described as embarrassing, indiscrete, mechanical, not soothing, and like “an industrial dairy pump”).
These complaints were echoed by hackathon participants during the introductory stage of the event. “The noise, the noise, the noise, I still have dreams about ,” says Mar Hershenson, cofounder of the venture capitalist firm Pejman Mar Ventures, and sponsor of the Silicon Valley pitch trip prize. Pumps should be more like the Fitbit and other wearable devices by tracking personal data, such as milk volume and pump settings and offering encouragement to the user, said one participant. For many, convenience loomed large. “I want to be able to take the whole kit and throw it in the dishwasher” said mom Liz Slavkovsky. Another asked, why not a basket that holds breast-pump parts in the dishwasher so they don’t come out filled with bits of food and rinse water?
