Hi, Mom’s Choice readers! As part of our ongoing interview series, we sat down with Kurt Workman, CEO & Co-Founder Owlet Baby Care—a company dedicated to revolutionizing infant healthcare. Owlet received a Mom’s Choice Award for Dream Sock—the first-of-its-kind FDA-cleared smart baby monitor. Designed for use with healthy infants between 1–18 months, 6–30 lbs, the Dream Sock offers parents peace of mind by allowing them to confidently make the best-informed decisions about their baby’s care. 

MCA: Kurt, welcome! As we get started, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself.

First and foremost, I am a husband and father to three children. That’s the main reason I founded Owlet more than 10 years ago. As CEO and Co-Founder of Owlet, I have dedicated the last decade to revolutionizing infant healthcare. I have led Owlet’s growth from its inception, overseeing the research and development of the company’s pipeline, including the creation of our Sock and other products intended to give parents peace of mind and more insight into their baby’s health. I also serve as a member of Owlet’s Board of Directors and provide key oversight of Owlet’s product portfolio and growth opportunities.

I studied business and engineering at Brigham Young University and reside in Utah. In fact, my wife and I just bought an old home and are working to fix that (it’s a work in progress). In my limited spare time, I love to spend time with my family, coach my son’s baseball team, and support BYU football.

MCA: Tell us about the creation of your company, Owlet Baby Care, and your current role.

I was inspired to start Owlet in 2012, when my wife and I were starting our own parenting journey. My wife was actually born with a genetic heart condition, which went undiagnosed at the time, and we were concerned our children would also be impacted. When my wife was an infant, she nearly passed away during her sleep from the condition. Her mother checked on her and found her blue, not breathing, having gone into cardiac arrest. She was rushed to the hospital for lifesaving surgery. In my early teens, I also lost a baby cousin to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). His death had no explanation and that never settled well with me. In the age of technological advancements in today’s society, it was utterly shocking to me—even as a teenager—that there wasn’t a better way to care for our babies.

I believe that every family deserves the peace of mind that comes from having insights into their baby’s health from the home, and I decided to dedicate my life to creating the technology needed. I teamed up with a group of my college friends to create a prototype wearable sock monitor that tracked Baby’s heart rate and oxygen level. Ten years later and many successes and some failures, we now have set a totally new standard for infant health monitoring. Dream Sock received a De Novo clearance from the FDA, meaning we set an entirely new category and are holding the industry to the highest standards. We were the first in the category and continue to push ourselves to provide the best care for babies.

As CEO and Co-Founder, my job is to be the visionary for the brand. We are taking Dream Sock international—making sure that parents around the world have access to medically certified, safe, and accurate technology so they can know their baby is ok. We also have a prescription version of our Sock, called BabySat, that we are working to make sure is easily accessible for families who need it.

MCA: What needs were you trying to fill when you created the Owlet Dream Sock?

On average, parents lose three hours of sleep per night, contributing to higher levels of stress and fatigue. With 126 million pediatric visits every year, it’s clear that health concerns also weigh heavily on parents’ minds. The number one reason for these visits is respiratory infections (in fact more than 2 million children under the age of five have outpatient visits for RSV, respiratory syncytial virus), and parents remain deeply concerned about sudden and unexpected health issues. We launched the FDA-cleared Dream Sock to help solve for some of these problems and elevate at-home monitoring. With Dream Sock, caregivers no longer have to lug home and navigate complicated, clunky hospital monitoring systems to get their baby’s key vital signs. Instead, Owlet’s medical-grade, sleek device wraps comfortably around the baby’s foot without any wires or adhesives—ensuring safe, comfortable and unrestricted movement while monitoring pulse rate, oxygen level, sleep patterns and more.

Dream Sock is another contribution to Owlet’s commitment to helping all parents and caregivers monitor what matters most, empowering them with the right information at the right time. The device works to expand accessibility and provide parents with the tools they need to confidently make decisions about their child’s health and safety.

MCA: Such ease of use and peace of mind are priceless. Please tell us about the research behind the product’s unique features.

Dream Sock centers around a flexible, sock-like device that wraps around a baby’s foot and has a sensor to track vital signs like pulse rate and oxygen saturation, while also monitoring sleep length, sleep quality, and cycles. The data is wirelessly transmitted to an app on caregivers’ smartphones. The app includes real-time heart rate and oxygen saturation measurements to be displayed on the app and raises an alarm if those measurements leave a safe preset range.

While working to achieve FDA clearance, we conducted rigorous clinical studies designed in consultation with the FDA to evaluate device accuracy across all skin tones, in both home and hospital environments and more. Dream Sock is proven to be as accurate as pulse oximeters used in the hospital.

MCA: How do your products impact a parent or other caregiver? 

Dream Sock not only provides accurate data to parents on their baby’s vitals, but it offers Live Health Readings and Health Notifications, arming them with real-time readings of vital signs and notifications for low pulse rate, high pulse rate, and low oxygen in the corresponding Dream App. Since these vitals will be impacted anytime an infant’s health might become vulnerable, parents will receive actionable alerts, as opposed to just movement notifications like other non-regulated monitors on the market. These equip caregivers with the right information at the right time, and provide them with confidence and clarity on their baby’s well-being.

MCA: What kind of feedback have you received about your products?

We have received positive feedback around our products. Owlet is trusted by millions of parents around the globe to provide safe and accurate monitoring of their babies during potentially their most vulnerable moments. While using Owlet, 96 percent of parents have reported they have less anxiety while their baby sleeps, and 94 percent of parents have reported better quality of sleep.

We recently launched our global Only Owlet campaign, which features stories from real parents who have shared how Owlet has made a critical difference in their lives—whether it was receiving an alarm that prompted them to take immediate action, helping parents identify early potential signs of illness, or simply providing the peace of mind that helped them get back to sleep.

Take one Owlet parent, Brian, for example, who shared his story about how Owlet helped him know when to seek care for his baby: “We thought she just had a cold, but our Dream Sock notified us of her low oxygen, prompting us to take her to the hospital. We were informed that [she] had RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] and was admitted immediately. Without that knowledge, who knows how long we would have waited to bring her in.”

MCA: How terrific that you and your firm are involved in such life-saving and life-transforming technology. We all need sleep—parents often most of all! What is next for you and your product line?

We have recently expanded the availability of Dream Sock across the UK and Europe, in countries including Germany, France, Poland, Greece, the Czech Republic, and more. We have more upcoming global launches coming in 2025 as well. We are also about to launch a new subscription feature set for parents in our Dream App that is going to give parents access to Owlet’s large set of infant health data to better understand if their baby’s health and sleep is normal. We are also working on a robust distribution and equity plan for our prescription device.

MCA: Kurt, thanks for taking time to join us for an enlightening interview. We’ll definitely be looking out for new developments in your product lineup.