NannyTest

My name is Yossi Pinkas and I am the founder of TakeCare.  NannyTest, TakeCare’s online personality and risk assessment tool, helps parents choose the best nanny, au pair or babysitter for their kids by providing better insight into a caregiver’s personality traits and potential risk factors.

How did I come up with NannyTest? My previous position was with a company that developed tools for investigations, truth validation and pre-employment integrity checks. During the three years I was working with the company, I became familiar with this world and the various tools and methods used extensively by both government organizations and corporations to screen employees, including personality tests. When my wife returned to work after my youngest son (now 2.5 years old) was born, we were looking for a nanny and it was then that I realized how useful such a test could be for parents.

Parents today already know they should interview applicants and check references. Some also perform background checks. Yet, all those screening measures have their limitations.

• Interviews often fail to reveal important facts or problematic personality traits, and their predictive value is limited, even when conducted by properly trained interviewers. Most parents are not trained interviewers and are usually lacking the necessary experience to properly formulate interview questions, read between the lines of what the applicant says, interpret non-verbal signs and body language, etc.
• Reference checks are highly subjective and in some cases past employers may even prefer, for various reasons, to omit certain details which may harm the candidate in his search for a new position.
• The quality of background checks varies and may be affected by the scope and accuracy of the databases used. Furthermore, a clean criminal record does not guarantee that a person has no criminal tendencies and there is always a first time for every offence.

Personality tests help overcome some of the limitations of existing screening measures. They allow parents to learn more about the nanny’s personality and traits and highlight possible risk factors.

Looking for a suitable test, I found that all available tests were targeted at large customers and parents just couldn’t gain access to them. Also, none were designed for screening caregivers. This led me to found TakeCare and launch a service that would answer this need.

NannyTest was created for TakeCare by Psiphas Psychological Applications, which has been supplying computerized psychological tests for over 20 years to government organizations, placement agencies and corporate customers such as FedEx and IKEA. It uses the CPI (California Psychological Inventory) as the basis for its personality assessment. (CPI has been used in the US for many years and has been validated by many researchers in various studies).

Still, although it is based on a well-accepted standard, in several ways NannyTest is unique:

• It is designed to be simple to use and the report is easy to understand – no professional background in Psychology or hiring is required, allowing the test to be used by parents themselves.
• For the sake of simplicity, it combines both personal traits suitability and risk assessment into a single test, rather than two separate tests.
• Being available on line means that any parent can use NannyTest, anytime and anywhere.
• Finally, and most important – traits assessed are specific to the role of a caregiver.
  • Risk assessment includes issues such as violent behavior, drug abuse, drinking habits, truthful reporting, theft and more.
  • Personality traits evaluated are responsibility, obedience and discipline, self-control, coping with pressure, service awareness and positive attitude.

It’s important to note that personality tests will never be 100% accurate and have their limitations. That is why combining several screening methods together improves the overall accuracy of the process and helps parents make an informed choice, selecting the best possible caregiver for their kids.

NannyTest was launched only several months ago but has already received excellent feedback from both experts and parents. We still have a long way to go but we hope that one day NannyTest, or similar personality tests, will become a standard component of the caregiver screening processes and be used by all parents.

HEALTHFUL HINTS:

When hiring someone to look after your child, know that:

• No single screening tool is 100% accurate. Parents should combine several screening tools together to gather as much information as possible before making a hiring decision.
• When screening a caregiver for your child combine interviews, reference checks, personality tests and background screening.
• Never ignore your intuition. If something feels wrong to you, move to the next applicant.

S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover

To clean most child car seats covers requires complete removal of the car seat from the vehicle. As a result, there are two groups of parents, those who are constantly taking their child’s car seat out of the car for cleaning and those who never remove it from its secure position in the vehicle.

My husband (an award winning pediatrician) and I used to fall in the first camp. Then we came up with a solution. The S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover provides a washable cover that doesn’t require removal of the child seat from the car.

Here’s our story:

We spend a lot of time in our car. Whether it’s taking the kids to school, afternoon or weekend activities or the long drives to grandma and grandpa’s house. All that driving often equals hungry and restless kids. The Cheerios® that used to pacify our kids at a younger age, soon turned into sticky apple slices, crumby granola bars, and drippy drinks. These snacks didn’t always make it into our kids’ mouths. More times than not, we’d find the leftovers in the child car seat. And after playground dates, our worn out kids mixed their dirty bottoms with this flavorful mess.

The only way to try and return their car seat to “like new condition” was to unfasten it from the vehicle, unhook the harness straps from the back of the seat, and then peel away the manufacturer’s car seat cover. Into the wash it went and if we were lucky, some of the stains disappeared. Then we’d reverse the process to put the seat back together. This process is not easy and takes plenty of time. When we’d go to put the child car seat back into our car, we could never quite get it right and would have to venture to our local Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for a trained technician to properly resecure it.

Sitting and talking with other parents, we knew we weren’t alone. Our frustrations were echoed amongst our friends. Some told us stories of leaky diapers and potty training accidents. Others, had kids who easily became carsick and frequently vomited. We’ve all experienced runny noses and drool that finds their way onto sleeves and nearby surfaces.

Searching the shelves at our local baby and toddler store, we found all sorts of mess-preventing items, like sippy cups, bibs, and high chair mats, but we couldn’t find something that would protect our child’s car seat cover from the inevitable every day dirt and grime accumulation. How could we create a better way to clean our children’s car seat covers while keeping them safe?

We turned our frustrations into action. Once we put our children to bed, we turned “together time” into “brainstorm time”. We carefully looked at both outgrown and current seats and we tried to figure out how to remove a car seat cover without having to disassemble the seat. We put our ideas on paper. We drew car seats and cut out the paper models. We did the same thing with scrap fabric. We even cut apart the manufacturers car seat cover to fully explore some options. Our late nights led to creation of specially designed release elements for a child car seat cover…5 years and many prototypes later, the S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover was born!

The S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover – (Secure And Fast, Easily Removable) – allowed us to remove and wash an otherwise disgusting car seat cover without having to jeopardize the car seat’s secure position in our car. It took less than 1 minute to remove and put back the cover. Our kids could now sit in a clean seat and we could eliminate removing the entire seat from the car, and avoid additional trips to the DMV. And, since proper hygiene is the first line of defense in keeping your child well and safe from illness, we now had an easy way to ensure our car was as safe an environment as our home!

But there were other ways we wanted it to be “SAFER” too. During the manufacturing process, we made sure the S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover underwent lab testing that included checking for absence of specific toxins and against flammability. The testing also included proper washability, ensuring that it will hold up to multiple washes in the washing machine. In the end, we came up with a cover that was <1/8 inch thick and slipped easily on top of an existing car seat cover.

Once we were comfortable with our solution we knew we wanted to market it so kids like yours could be S.A.F.E.R., too. We were granted two patents for our designs and received a “Gold Medal” at INPEX 2008- America’s largest invention trade show.. Most important of all we received numerous comments from parents like you that their child’s car seats were a mess and they hated cleaning them…the S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover made all the difference.

HEALTHFUL HINTS:

Car Seat Safety

• Always check that your child car seat is tightly secured in your vehicle by pushing and pulling it side to side. It should not move more than one inch in either direction. We encourage a child car seat to be installed at least initially by a certified child passenger safety technician. Locate one in your state here
• Shoulder harness straps for children in a forward facing car seat should always sit at or above the child’s shoulders. The S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover has 3 levels of slots, designed to line up with a manufacturer’s original design.
• Harness straps should be pulled tightly against your child and the chest clip should be at armpit level. Do not wear winter coats in a child car seat.

Keeping your child seat cover clean:

• When washing a child seat cover, wash it in a mesh bag on a gentle cycle to minimize damage (the S.A.F.E.R. Child Car Seat Cover can be washed in the mesh “wash me” bag in which it was originally packaged).
• Since the cover needs to maintain its shape to function properly, hang it to dry overnight – do not put it in a dryer. This will reduce the possibility of shrinkage.

SeatSnug

Hi! I’m Bruce Mather, the inventor of the SeatSnug which enhances the safety and comfort of children in car booster seats. How did I end up inventing a new child safety device? Because I like to drive fast. Very fast. Let me explain.

Some people take golf lessons. Some people take tennis lessons. I take driving lessons. Like millions of others, I enjoy driving my car very fast and I take my every day car out on a racetrack to do so, where a professional driver coaches me on how to drive even faster.

As I’m sure you know, race car drivers use multi-point harnesses in their cars for better driving control and for safety. But, because I was using the car I drove to work in every day as my race car, it was not convenient to put harnesses in it. Unfortunately, this meant I was sliding around all the time at the track, and not able to control the car as well as I would like because the car’s seat belt allows looseness to develop in the lap belt while riding.

So I invented the CG-Lock to hold me in the seat, yet keep the car unmodified. The CG-Lock is a small, palm sized device that easily clips onto the buckle part of your seat belt. What it does is allow you to lock the lap belt portion of your seat belt from gentle to very tight. Think of an aircraft seatbelt. You buckle it up, and pull on the loose end to make the lap belt as tight as you want. That’s what the CG-Lock does, except it does it with a seat belt that also has a shoulder belt portion. You buckle your seatbelt and pull up on the shoulder belt to make the lap belt as tight as you want. The shoulder belt is unaffected, so you can stretch and reach as usual. After all, this is your daily driver. The lap belt stays as tight as you have set it until you unbuckle or push a lever that releases the tension.

So how did this turn into a child safety device? Because of a rule: when sports car drivers take driving instruction, both the driver’s and the passenger’s seats must be equipped identically. This means that a sports car driver using a CG lock for better control, must also put one on the instructor’s seat. Since most of these cars are driven daily, moms use the cars too. And some of the moms began writing us how much of an improvement in stability and comfort the CG-Lock provided. They suggested that the CG-Lock could be used to more safely secure children in booster seats and older children who are not safely secured by the seat belt itself.

When I looked into this unexpected use for the CG-Lock, I found there was a big need to improve booster seat safety. Booster seats rock and tip, allowing looseness or slack to develop in the lap belt portion of the seatbelt. This not only makes the seat rock more and sometimes even fall over, but it allows the child to slouch. This is dangerous. In the event of an accident, a loose lap belt can ride up over the abdomen of the child causing severe injury. Abdominal injuries are the most common injuries for children in booster seats after an accident. Further, a loose lap belt can allow a child to submarine under the belt or to be thrown against the side of the vehicle or to be ejected. A slouching child also allows the seat belt to be out of position when an accident occurs and to not be properly positioned to take optimum advantage of the safety equipment in the vehicle.

So it looked like the CG-Lock was a great product for child safety. But when I tested it with a larger number of moms, I found that most did not like the look, weight, or attachment method. To meet moms’ needs, I needed to completely redesign the CG-Lock…I did, and called it SeatSnug. Now it gets really interesting!

Using a modified version of the government’s child car seat crash test protocol, and an instrumented six year old sized “crash test dummy” at 30 miles an hour, I found that the G forces on a child would be about 7 Gs less at the chest and 11 Gs less at the hips when SeatSnug is added to the seatbelt! Wow! These were amazing improvements in the safety potential measurements. In addition, with only a gentle tightening, the lap belt always stays low across the upper thighs and hips of the child (exactly where the government and child car seat manufacturers recommend). This gentle tightening restricts the booster seat from rocking or tipping to make the child more comfortable too. I’ve even received testimonials that the reduced bouncing reduces car sickness. Finally, a snugged lap belt means the child is sitting up straight at all times, which is the optimum position for absorbing the energy in the event of a crash.

Most parents, like me during track days, probably thought the manufacturer-supplied seatbelts found in cars today are sufficient for providing the safest possible situation for their children. Not true! As I soon found out, standard, comfortable, one-size-fits-all seatbelts alone can’t offer maximum protection to occupants, including small children. SeatSnug solves that problem and enhances both safety and comfort for children.

Parents’ and Grandparents’ awareness of the problem, and the SeatSnug solution, is JUST starting to grow and I am very proud of the acceptance our devices are receiving. Now, our CG-Lock is widely used by the motion picture industry during the performance of dangerous driving scenes to enhance driving control and safety. I like to think if the CG-Lock is good enough for James Bond, it should be something every parent would want in every vehicle to protect their loved ones.

To help raise awareness that you CAN do more to protect your children, Lap Belt Cinch, Inc. announced the SeatSnug “Snug Up America” campaign – a major nationwide children’s safety campaign aimed at promoting greater child passenger safety and awareness. To join SeatSnug in helping to raise awareness by educating others on child passenger safety issues visit www.seatsnug.com and click on the “Snug Up America” button to see how you can make a difference.

HEALTHFUL HINTS

About Booster Seats:

• Children of booster seat age and/or weight should ride in a booster seat in the rear seat. To locate the age and weight requirements for your state, visit 
  http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/childsafety_laws.html.
• Check out booster seats to make certain they properly fit your child.
• Always buckle up children in booster seats with the seatbelt. Make certain that the shoulder strap properly fits across a child’s chest, over the shoulder and not across the neck. Visit safekids.org for the “safety belt fit test”.
• For an instructional video on how to best secure your child in a booster seat, click here.

PMD March 2005: Announcing the PedREST

In 2004 Pediatric Medical received notice that we were going to be granted our first patent – YEAH!!! We were finally ready to share our “creation” with the world

Our first opportunity came in March 2005 with something called the LifeSavers Conference. For those of you not familiar with it, Lifesavers is the premier national highway safety meeting in the United States dedicated to reducing the tragic toll of deaths and injuries on our nation’s roadways… The conference addresses a wide range of safety topics, from child passenger safety and occupant protection to roadway and vehicle safety and technology. It offers the latest information on advances in highway safety, highlights successful programs and draws attention to emerging safety issues.” It was to be held that year in North Carolina and seemed like the perfect place to “showcase” our new device. They even had a workshop scheduled on “transporting children on ambulances” being run by Dr. Marilyn Bull of Riley’s Children’s Hospital – well known for her work on ambulance safety. And for the icing on the cake – I had family in Charlotte – so I could attend the conference without having to rent a hotel room.

I made arrangements to attend the conference and not too long after drove to North Carolina for breakfast with my mother’s cousin and his girlfriend who worked for Britax (one of the most well-respected manufactures of child seats in the world – seriously what a coup)! Later that afternoon I met her over at the conference and she introduced me to the Britax folks in charge of new business development – who took one look at what we had and introduced us to SnugSeat – the company they partnered with to manufacture “specialty child seats”. Oh, and before I forget, while we were still at the Britax booth, some local EMS guys stopped by, saw our demo, and asked where they could get one. Can you say happy as a pig xxx xxxx??? (I’ll let you fill in the blanks)

Later that afternoon I attended the workshop on safe ambulance transport for kids. Unfortunately Dr Bull had been taken ill and could not attend herself – however her colleagues (Dr Judith Talty and Shayne Merritt) gave the presentation on her behalf. Their conclusion – which was no surprise to anyone, especially me – was that there really were no safe ways to transport little kids and that they hoped manufacturers would change this for the future.

At this point – totally “jazzed” – I waited until after the session and spoke with Dr Talty and Shayne. Both were floored by the PedREST presentation and asked me to please keep in touch and forward whatever I could to Dr Bull. Flying high I made the rounds of the other child seat manufacturers attending the conference (Graco, Evenflo, etc.) and finally, exhausted, headed for home.

5 days later I headed to Philadelphia for the EMS Today conference and there met with the top “players” in the EMS industry – Stryker, Ferno, Laerdal, Microtek Medical, Allied Health, etc. The response was tremendous, and the offers of encouragement and support, overwhelming! The PedREST was a hit!

Two weeks later, the following email arrived from Shayne Merritt:

Stephanie,

We will be passing this information on to Dr. Bull. In the meantime, if you have any photos or schematics that you could send for Dr. Bull, that would be helpful.

Your product is very intriguing and exciting since it’s success would fill an important need.

Shayne

As I look back on all of this, I can’t help but smile when I think about how on top of the world we were. The people we met…the welcome we received. I couldn’t have imagined a better way to start the next phase of our journey! Little did I know how much more of a journey lay ahead. To me, at that moment, the PedREST had officially arrived…

Until next time…

PMD 2004: And After Every Rain…A Rainbow

As you can probably tell, 2004 was a bit of a rollercoaster. And trust me when I say that after that disaster of a weekend, I was seriously ready for the cart to start rolling uphill again.

Sure enough Monday afternoon found us on a conference call with the examiner from the US patent office. See our patent had been already gone through 3 office actions and things were getting a little frustrating (not to mention expensive) so we decided to speak directly to the examiner to see if we could understand the rationale behind what he would and wouldn’t approve. Now having gone through this process several times, I feel obliged to tell you that unfortunately, in all likelihood a call like this will probably not leave you with a better understanding of how your examiner thinks.  What it can do however is provide you with insight into the one or two words or phrases that your examiner has a conflict with….and that can make all the difference in the world. Case in point: 

Our call began with our examiner showing us the “prior art” (i.e. other existing patents filed before ours) that he believed we would infringe upon with our current claim language. We went back and forth over a couple of minor points, made some small changes and then sat down to discuss what he considered to be the one “obstacle” we hadn’t yet overcome: a portable surgery tray that attached to a stretcher and kept the medical instruments secure – OR – as far as we could see – a cafeteria lunch tray with a strap running across it. (note – those of you who’ve been through this process are no-doubt chuckling because you’ve “lived the dream” of bizarre prior art references – for those of you whose jaws just hit the table, know that ours did too and we hadn’t even gotten to the best part).

We were quiet for a second and then our patent attorney who had joined us in the call proceeded to ask very calmly how the examiner thought this could be used to secure a child for safe transport to a hospital.  His answer – no joke – “well you could tape a baby to that tray”.

The silence was deafening…I mean seriously, how do you counter that??? Finally, after what seemed like minutes (ok, really only seconds) of silence I made a decision. No amount of intelligent discussion / arguing was going to change his opinion. I just needed to know where in his opinion we had gone wrong so that we could fix it.  So I sucked it up and asked…and to my surprise, he told me.  Not long after that we filed our final response with the USPTO.

For weeks I checked PAIR (the Patent Application Information Retrieval system for the USPTO) daily hoping for some kind of sign that we were finally done.  Thanksgiving morning (…and yes it really was Thanksgiving) I got one – our official “Notice of Allowance” was posted. 

I could follow this part of the story with a section on “what I learned” but I feel pretty confident that you all can figure that out on your own. I will say that after what felt like a torrential downpour I finally got my rainbow…

Until next time…with love from the “tape a baby corporation”