Description

BCALM – Smart Breastfeeding Monitoring System

BCALM – Smart Breastfeeding Monitoring System
Supervisor: Dr. Ofer Melamed
General Description
Breastfeeding is one of the most important foundations for infant health, nutrition, development, and survival. Around the world, improving breastfeeding has the potential to significantly improve the health and quality of life of millions of mothers and babies.
Yet breastfeeding still has a major technological gap: a mother often does not know how much milk her baby actually receives during breastfeeding.
The BCALM project aims to develop a smart breastfeeding monitoring system capable of collecting information during breastfeeding, analyzing the measurements, and presenting meaningful information to the mother through a simple application.
The system will combine a physical measurement platform, sensors, an embedded controller, wireless communication, data acquisition, algorithms, databases, visualization, and application development.
BCALM has already received funding from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) and serves as the technological foundation of a growing startup—giving students a unique opportunity to contribute to a real innovation journey with the potential to move from the laboratory to the global market.
The project combines several major areas of Computer Science and engineering, including Internet of Things (IoT), embedded programming, application development, signal processing, communication protocols, algorithms, databases, visualization, and data analysis.
The importance of this project goes far beyond technology. Providing meaningful real-time information could help transform breastfeeding from a largely unmeasured process into a smart, measurable, data-driven experience.
The emphasis of the project is therefore not only on building a measurement device, but on creating a smart software-controlled system capable of collecting physiological measurements, processing signals, identifying meaningful patterns, and presenting simple and useful information to the user.
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Project Scope
The project provides students with the opportunity to develop a complete technological system addressing a meaningful real-world challenge.
The emphasis of the project is on Computer Science, IoT, application development, algorithms, signal processing, data analysis, and system integration.
The students will not simply develop an application or connect sensors. They will be challenged to build a complete pipeline:
Breastfeeding → Sensors → Embedded System → Communication → Algorithms → Database → Application → Meaningful Information
The ultimate vision is to demonstrate how Computer Science and IoT technologies can help bring objective measurement and intelligent analysis into one of the most fundamental processes in early human life.
Purpose and main objectives of the project
The purpose of the project is to design and develop a complete smart breastfeeding monitoring and measurement system.
The system should include a physical measurement platform, sensors, an embedded controller, communication with an application or cloud service, data acquisition, signal processing, and algorithms for analyzing breastfeeding sessions.
The main objectives are:
•	Develop an IoT-based measurement system for monitoring breastfeeding.
•	Integrate sensors into a physical breastfeeding measurement platform.
•	Measure parameters related to the breastfeeding process.
•	Possible parameters may include:
o	Milk flow
o	Estimated milk volume
o	Sucking patterns
o	Pressure / vacuum
o	Temperature
•	Collect measurements continuously during a breastfeeding session.
•	Process and filter sensor signals.
•	Send data wirelessly using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or another suitable communication protocol.
•	Develop an application for monitoring the breastfeeding session.
•	Store historical breastfeeding measurements in a database.
•	Display real-time and historical information using graphs and dashboards.
•	Develop algorithms that transform raw sensor measurements into meaningful information.
•	Build a complete demonstrator integrating hardware, embedded software, communication, algorithms, database, and application.
•	Ensure project continuity by identifying, documenting, and proposing future improvements, new features, and technological directions that can be implemented in the next development stages of BCALM.
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Student Requirements
Students participating in this project are expected to work as a development team and divide responsibilities between areas such as embedded software, sensor integration, communication, algorithms, signal processing, backend development, application development, database management, testing, and system integration.
Embedded Development
•	Arduino IDE
•	ESP32 or another suitable embedded controller
•	Sensor interfacing
•	Real-time data acquisition
IoT Communication
Possible technologies include:
•	Bluetooth / BLE
•	Wi-Fi
•	MQTT
•	HTTP / REST API
•	WebSockets
Application Development
The students may develop a:
•	Mobile application
•	Web application
•	Desktop application
Possible technologies include:
•	React
•	JavaScript / TypeScript
•	Flutter
•	Python
•	Node.js
•	HTML / CSS
•	Other suitable application-development frameworks
Algorithms and Data Analysis
The project should include algorithms for processing and interpreting breastfeeding measurements.
Possible examples include:
•	Real-time signal processing
•	Identification of sucking patterns
•	Milk-flow estimation
•	Milk-volume estimation
•	Comparison between breastfeeding sessions
•	Visualization and analysis of historical data
Students may use:
•	Python
•	Other
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Deliverables: Final Submission
The final product must be submitted as one .zip** file** containing all of the following:
1.	The final system should include a complete working demonstrator of the BCALM breastfeeding monitoring system.
2.	Code Files – in GitHub
3.	Presentation
4.	Updated Development Document (PRS, SRS)
5.	Link to a YouTube Video
6.	Project Poster
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Additional Notes
For any questions, students may also contact: Ofer.melamed@gmail.com
BCALM – Smart Breastfeeding Monitoring System

Medical Fields

Description

Emphasis in project execution

The project is has cooperation with the industry and combines meeting deadlines while being creative and focused on the task
