The pillow was originally designed for therapy, but is expanding into a consumer product.
The local inventors of a pillow that plays music to soothe troubled sleepers have raised $85,000 in a Kickstarter campaign that exceeded its funding target the day after it opened.
Randall Redfield and his colleagues at Aurora-based Integrative Listening Systems dreamt up the Dreampad as a therapy to calm children with autism and other conditions. Ten pillow designs later, ILS launched a crowdfunding project on Oct. 11 to expand from the clinic into consumer products.
“The reason we’re doing (Kickstarter) really is to get visibility with the new consumer groups that we’re trying to reach out to,” said Redfield, 59. That means working adults as well as their children or aging parents that have trouble sleeping.
The money is a perk, too: ILS is increasing production to be sure it has plenty of inventory available to fill orders on Kickstarter and beyond.
“We’ve shifted to a new manufacturer to make the product scalable, so we can meet larger demand,” said Redfield. ILS is also looking to add staff at what is now a 23-person company.
Redfield co-founded ILS in 2007 with Kate O’Brien-Minson and Ron Minson, a clinical psychiatrist. A few years prior, Redfield was working for a company that developed movement therapies to treat dyslexia and other learning disorders when he found Ron Minson’s research on using sound for similar needs.
The three formed ILS and began to produce music to be played through headsets that use bones in the middle and inner ear to transmit sound, rather than the outer ear like a typical speaker.
ILS says this bone conduction triggers the body’s instincts to relax. A child with autism or another learning difficulty wears the headphones while performing physical tasks like throwing and catching a ball to train the brain to use different senses at the same time.
But some kids didn’t like wearing the headsets, so Redfield designed a thin, rectangular pad with a sound transducer inside of it. Kids could rest their heads on the pad while reclining.
Like the headset, sound travels from the pad and through the listener’s middle and inner ear. An added benefit: only the person lying on the pillow can hear it.
Early models were just what the doctor ordered. The technology seemed to calm children to the point of dozing. Parents reported chronically sleepless children finally resting through the night and confessed that they would snag the pad themselves after junior fell asleep. ILS began trials with people experiencing post-traumatic stress disorders or recovering from brain injuries.
“It’s wonderful to have a product which helps so many different people,” said Redfield.
But for a time, the pillow remained only a clinical tool, useful for relieving stress and trauma in patients, but impractical for consumer use. The first model cost $325. And Redfield recalls that early models weren’t the most comfortable design for adults accustomed to cushier pillows.
So the company continued to tinker. It raised money from angel investors in 2013 and came up with the name Dreampad. By 2015, ILS was making a profit on the strength of its music and movement programs and headsets.
The Dreampad debuting on Kickstarter is made by Hollander, the same manufacturer whose pillow consumers might already own. It includes a new smartphone app with ambient music to lull users to sleep and has a much lower price tag, $100.
And Redfield thinks that at a time when consumers have apps and wearables that monitor sleep, they’re ready for a Dreampad, too.
“Most of the sleep technology out there really is around measuring sleep,” he said. “We’re not as interested in measuring as much as in improving sleep.”
The pillow was originally designed for therapy, but is expanding into a consumer product.
The local inventors of a pillow that plays music to soothe troubled sleepers have raised $85,000 in a Kickstarter campaign that exceeded its funding target the day after it opened.
Randall Redfield and his colleagues at Aurora-based Integrative Listening Systems dreamt up the Dreampad as a therapy to calm children with autism and other conditions. Ten pillow designs later, ILS launched a crowdfunding project on Oct. 11 to expand from the clinic into consumer products.
“The reason we’re doing (Kickstarter) really is to get visibility with the new consumer groups that we’re trying to reach out to,” said Redfield, 59. That means working adults as well as their children or aging parents that have trouble sleeping.
The money is a perk, too: ILS is increasing production to be sure it has plenty of inventory available to fill orders on Kickstarter and beyond.
“We’ve shifted to a new manufacturer to make the product scalable, so we can meet larger demand,” said Redfield. ILS is also looking to add staff at what is now a 23-person company.
Redfield co-founded ILS in 2007 with Kate O’Brien-Minson and Ron Minson, a clinical psychiatrist. A few years prior, Redfield was working for a company that developed movement therapies to treat dyslexia and other learning disorders when he found Ron Minson’s research on using sound for similar needs.
The three formed ILS and began to produce music to be played through headsets that use bones in the middle and inner ear to transmit sound, rather than the outer ear like a typical speaker.
ILS says this bone conduction triggers the body’s instincts to relax. A child with autism or another learning difficulty wears the headphones while performing physical tasks like throwing and catching a ball to train the brain to use different senses at the same time.
But some kids didn’t like wearing the headsets, so Redfield designed a thin, rectangular pad with a sound transducer inside of it. Kids could rest their heads on the pad while reclining.
Like the headset, sound travels from the pad and through the listener’s middle and inner ear. An added benefit: only the person lying on the pillow can hear it.
Early models were just what the doctor ordered. The technology seemed to calm children to the point of dozing. Parents reported chronically sleepless children finally resting through the night and confessed that they would snag the pad themselves after junior fell asleep. ILS began trials with people experiencing post-traumatic stress disorders or recovering from brain injuries.
“It’s wonderful to have a product which helps so many different people,” said Redfield.
But for a time, the pillow remained only a clinical tool, useful for relieving stress and trauma in patients, but impractical for consumer use. The first model cost $325. And Redfield recalls that early models weren’t the most comfortable design for adults accustomed to cushier pillows.
So the company continued to tinker. It raised money from angel investors in 2013 and came up with the name Dreampad. By 2015, ILS was making a profit on the strength of its music and movement programs and headsets.
The Dreampad debuting on Kickstarter is made by Hollander, the same manufacturer whose pillow consumers might already own. It includes a new smartphone app with ambient music to lull users to sleep and has a much lower price tag, $100.
And Redfield thinks that at a time when consumers have apps and wearables that monitor sleep, they’re ready for a Dreampad, too.
“Most of the sleep technology out there really is around measuring sleep,” he said. “We’re not as interested in measuring as much as in improving sleep.”
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