Mat watches over the nap and stores it in the cloud. hugsafety" provides total safety and information retrieval.

(We spoke to...)
hugmo inc.
New Strategy, Office of the President
Akane Ishii

Mr. Ishii (honorific title omitted) and the mat-like sensor used in "hugsafety".

What is "hugmo," the child-rearing cloud?

Editorial:In addition to "hugsafety," your company offers a variety of other services, doesn't it?

Ishii:Our services are mainly used by "nursery schools" and "kindergartens. The various services we offer are interconnected, and we refer to them collectively as "hugmo," our child-rearing cloud. The foundation of the entire service is a "contact book service" called "hugnote. Traditionally, paper-based "contact sheets" and "letters" were used to connect parents and day-care centers, but this system is an electronic version of them. Information on daycare children is registered, and "mutual communication between nursery staff and parents" and "notices from the nursery" can all be exchanged via tablet or smartphone.

Editorial:That is very convenient!

Ishii:You can inform the daily status of childcare and school lunch menu with photos, and also manage schedules for events, etc. It is very difficult to communicate the status of childcare using only text, but by adding photos, it becomes very easy to convey the information. Also, by sending a photo of the school lunch eaten that day and informing you of what the children left out, you can make up for any nutritional deficiencies at home and ensure that the menu does not conflict with the dinner menu. This is a great way to avoid the situation where the children's lunch at daycare is curry and dinner at home is also curry. This can be avoided. The "Read Check" function is also popular among day-care centers. This function allows the day-care centers to know whether or not the parents have read the various notices, and if they have not read the notices, they can send them again or inform them directly.

Editorial:It is a great help for working families.

Ishii: The "hugphoto" system allows nursery schools to manage and sell photos accumulated through the use of "hugnote. By using this system, it is possible to sell printed photos on a per-photo basis. In addition, "hugphoto" also offers a service to dispatch professional photographers, and photos taken by these photographers can be sold.

Editorial:What other services do you offer?

Ishii: The "hugselection" is a shopping site that can be used primarily for the sale of original "hugmo" items and for selling items within nursery schools and kindergartens. Currently available original items include, for example, "booklets printed with hugnote. These are mainly used as souvenirs at the time of graduation. Another example of items for sale in nursery schools and kindergartens is the "sale of gym uniforms. This is appreciated because it eliminates the need to keep money in the school and also reduces the burden of exchanging change with parents.

Editorial:Yes, it is a hassle to buy with cash. ......

Ishii: In addition, "huglocation" is a service that allows users to check the location of kindergarten buses with their smartphones. Since this service uses the GPS in the smartphone, it can be easily implemented by simply bringing the smartphone onto the bus without any special on-board GPS equipment. Originally developed by Softbank, this technology was used to determine the location of shuttle buses connecting office buildings. Kindergarten buses can be delayed depending on road conditions, and we have heard that some parents have waited more than 30 minutes in the rain ......, and that the kindergarten was inundated with phone calls inquiring about the buses because they were delayed for more than an hour. This system will solve such problems because the location of the bus can be tracked by the parents' smartphones. In the future, we would like to expand the system to "buses used by school-age children.

What is hugsafety, an IoT child care service?

Editorial:Now, please give us an overview of "hugsafety".

Ishii: This system is mainly used in daycare centers, with an emphasis on IoT integration. The service monitors the condition of children while they are napping and aggregates the data in the cloud. Nursery schools are required to conduct "nap checks," and nursery school nurses are supposed to check the condition (breathing and body movements) of children who are napping every 5 minutes or so. This service will assist such nursery school nurses and watch over children together.

Editorial: What are the benefits of introducing this system?

Ishii: First, the safety of napping children will be improved because they will be watched over by double checks by "nursery staff" and "hugsafety". Secondly, up until now, noon-sleep checks in general day-care centers have been done on a "paper basis," but by introducing this service, it is possible to digitize the forms using tablet terminals. The children's data is registered in "hugnote," which is linked to "hugsafety," so there is no need to set up a new system. This is also the case when using other "hugmo" services.

Editorial: This is a strength unique to hugmo, which provides comprehensive IoT services.

Ishii:Using a tablet can greatly reduce the time and effort required to fill out forms. For example, in a large daycare center with about 15 children, it would be difficult to manually check off all the checks that have been verified, but using a tablet makes it possible to input all the information at once. In addition, mat-like sensors are placed under the bedding under which the children sleep to monitor them, and these continuously record "breathing conditions" and "body movements. In the future, the data could be used to measure "sleep time" and to check the "stress status" of children. For example, children who have just entered preschool and are under stress will have different "sleep data" movements than other children, so it may be possible to use ...... to pay special attention to children who show such movements and prevent accidents before they happen. Analyzing the data stored in the cloud may provide even more new services in the future.

Editorial: What happens, for example, if a child shows abnormal breathing?

Ishii:If something unusual is detected in "hugsafety," an alert will be displayed in "hugnote" for the entire daycare center, indicating who in which classroom and what kind of unusual event has occurred. The alert will not disappear until some action is taken, so even if it happened when the childcare worker in charge was out of sight, other childcare workers can follow up on the situation.

Editorial: That is reassuring.

Assist in streamlining communication and clerical work so that the original childcare time is available

Editorial:With "hugsafety," we can expect not only "safety" but also "efficiency."

Ishii:HUGNOTE" also has an administrator's screen, where the entire daycare center's noon sleep data can be reviewed and approved. All of this data is stored in the cloud, so it will remain on file until the children graduate. While paper-based storage would be enormous and take up a lot of space in a daycare center, electronic storage saves space and is completely organized. The data can be printed out for checks by local authorities, and the search function makes it easy to respond to unannounced inspections by saying, "Please give me the data for Mr. Whose on what day of the month?

Editorial: That would be very useful.

Ishii: Incidentally, since the method of filling out forms prescribed by each municipality differs, "hugsafety" can be customized to accommodate these differences. For example, the symbols indicating "children's body orientation" may be arrows in some municipalities and alphabets in others, so nursery schools can freely change them. Childcare workers are very busy, so I think it is very important to promote greater efficiency in their work and systems.

<After the interview

According to Mr. Ishii, a manager of a day-care center who introduced the system commented, "This system not only protects the safety of the children, but also protects the day-care workers. This system seems to be reassuring to the childcare workers as well, as it allows them to efficiently record data on the proper responses they have taken. In addition, parents have recently become more IoT literate, and they sometimes ask, "What kind of equipment does this nursery use for 'noon sleep check'? There was a nursery ...... that was convinced thanks to the introduction of "hugsafety". With the shortage of childcare workers, it is inevitable to improve the efficiency of childcare operations, and in view of the declining birthrate in the future, there will surely come a time when "daycare centers will be chosen". We are very much looking forward to the company's efforts to be ahead of such an era.