A New Toothbrush Can Tell You When Your Kids Aren’t Brushing!

This just proves how crazy technology can be! A new toothbrush by Beam connects with an iPhone app to track brushing. A wireless connection tracks every brush stroke, making it easy for “the reluctant brusher [to] time their strokes and monitor their daily progress.” It can also link to your dentist and report on your brushing habits—but I’m sure this is something you connect yourself! So how did this crazy tool come to be?

The designers explained the need: “Today, the average person brushes their teeth for only 46 seconds, but is 50% more likely to brush their teeth for a full two minutes by using just a simple timer. Oral care is considered patient-centered, since oral health is impacted significantly by your daily hygiene habits. Data from the Beam Brush is designed to raise awareness for your oral care.”

The smart phone app allows the brusher to set goals—five star brush habits, brushing twice daily for two weeks, and tracks long term improvement. Perhaps the coolest feature is that the toothbrush automatically activates a timer when put in the mouth, drawing from the body’s bio-electricity. The brush costs $50.00 and $4.00 for replacement heads. It is a manual brush so, as the CEO of Beam Alex Frommeyer explained, “nothing about how you brush your teeth changes at all, but what we can do while you brush your teeth does change.”

Would you ever invest in something like this? It certainly beats the age-old test of feeling a toothbrush to check if it’s damp—and it’s definitely preferable to “let me smell your breath”! I think the only flaw is that you can’t use the app with a normal brush. We all have our brands, so maybe the next step is collaborating with Oral-B and Colgate to make replacement heads?