Playbrush

Playbrush is an oral care invention for children that is designed to encourage kids to brush their teeth regularly and properly. The Playbrush device – developed by an Austro-British company with the same name – is a dongle that fits onto the end of any manual toothbrush and connects to a smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth Low Energy. The movement of the brush is picked up by motion sensors in the dongle, which then feeds it to the phone to control different games, that encourage brushers to spend a full two minutes cleaning their teeth.

The idea came from Paul Varga, an Austrian entrepreneur and inventor, in 2013 while observing the behavior of his three-year-old godson, whose parents would amuse him during bedtime rituals like toothbrushing by playing YouTube clips on their iPad. Together with childhood friend Matthäus Ittner and former fellow student Tolulope Ogunsina, with the help of University College London, Varga kicked off the development of Playbrush in summer 2014. The development was supported by various dentists, among others Dr. Paul Ashley, Head of Pediatric dentistry at the Eastman Dental Institute and Dr. Aubrey Sheiham from University College London's Dental Public Health department.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign in Spring 2015 the version one of the Playbrush launched in November 2015, with mobile apps for Android and iOS, in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. The company raised venture capital to scale distribution and enhance its online marketing efforts a little later. In October 2016 the Playbrush was available in over 25 countries already.

Playbrush's technology consists of hardware and software. The hardware is an Internet of Things device that has a colored TPE rubber part, which attaches to most manual toothbrushes and a white Copolyester (PCT) part that holds an electronics circuit board. The electronics include motion sensors to detect where users are brushing. That motion data is captured and transmitted in real-time to the users smartphone or tablet, where the software kicks-in. Playbrush's algorithm translate the brushing data in interactive games that children control via their brushing movements. In October 2016 Playbrush had four games available, on the Android Play Store and the Apple App Store, called the Utoothia Series. There is also a web-app which parents can use to monitor their children's toothbrushing and share brushing data with dentists.

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Wikipedia