Getting the Most Out of Temperature Data with the Braun Family Care™ App Built Using AWS IoT Core with Helen of Troy

Founded in 1968 as a beauty products company, Helen of Troy has grown to offer durables from its Beauty and Wellness and Home and Outdoor divisions.

In the fall of 2020, the company’s Beauty and Wellness team set out to develop the CDF and the first connected experience: the Braun Family Care app for the Braun ThermoScan®³ 7 Connect thermometer. Helen of Troy’s goals were to help families get value out of temperature data with features like age-appropriate recommendations for fever care and to use a cloud infrastructure to continue updating the software and enhancing features for the life of the product. The framework needed to be scalable so that Helen of Troy could quickly and simply launch more connected experiences across its brands. Helen of Troy compared other cloud providers and chose AWS because of its expertise and flexibility to meet immediate needs, with room to expand for future initiatives. With experience using AWS services for IoT projects since 2018, Helen of Troy trusted AWS to deliver a quality solution that maintains high security for sensitive health data.

From the beginning, Helen of Troy engaged AWS Professional Services, which organizations use to achieve desired business outcomes when using AWS, to help design the digital solution and provide guidance around regulatory compliance. “The AWS Professional Services team had expertise, which gave us the confidence to complete the project the right way the first time,” says Edwin De Leon, director of engineering at Helen of Troy. “There was a sense of collaboration from the start.” In early 2022, Helen of Troy launched the Braun Family Care app in the United States.

To continually innovate and improve the customer experience, Helen of Troy collects data from Bluetooth-capable customer devices using AWS IoT Core, which organizations use to easily and securely connect billions of IoT devices to the cloud. Helen of Troy uses data analysis to determine which features of smart devices are most useful to customers, helping the company invest resources effectively. The CDF that the company built on AWS facilitates innovation by providing data to guide advanced feature development. For example, because the company collects temperature data across the United States, Helen of Troy is looking to notify parents if illnesses are increasing in a geographic area, which could affect behavior and reduce disease transmission. “Using data in the app, we can answer questions that we have but can’t design consumer product testing around,” says Rich Thrush, vice president of design and innovation at Helen of Troy. “Insights from our solution built using AWS IoT Core drive the new products that we create, how we think about innovation, and the decisions that we make in the near term.”

Connected devices also bring value by providing feedback to help improve a product. Customers expect products like thermometers to be accurate, and the perception of accuracy often determines whether a customer has a positive experience. By analyzing data collected using AWS IoT Core, Helen of Troy plans to identify readings that a customer might perceive as inaccurate, such as an outlier reading when a customer takes several readings in the same day. Helen of Troy will also be able to see when a customer enters a temperature manually in the app and can compare the value to readings received through the CDF. “Using data collected from our solution built on AWS, we can see if the customer experience is degrading and proactively fix issues before a user complains,” says Jim Gorsich, associate director of engineering at Helen of Troy.

With a cloud infrastructure, Helen of Troy collects and delivers insights to customers in near real time, helping them understand the data to make informed decisions. For example, the Braun Family Care app serves as a centralized place for all household members to track temperature data, regardless of who took a reading. To access this data, Helen of Troy uses several AWS services, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), object storage built to retrieve any amount of data from anywhere. “Using AWS IoT Core and the CDF, we didn’t need to build, stitch together, and manage as much ourselves,” says Uwe Meding, senior IoT architect at Helen of Troy. “Reducing the development time and complexity required to build and maintain IoT-scale systems was really important for us.”

The IoT infrastructure also facilitates the agile rollout of new products and scaling up of required services, which is important because Helen of Troy can use its worldwide presence to provide intelligent healthcare, wellness, and home comfort products. With support from AWS Professional Services, Helen of Troy is working toward releasing the Braun Family Care app in the European Union, which requires an application to the Medical Device Regulation and compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation. “We’ve benefited greatly from the expertise of AWS Professional Services while pursuing compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation,” says Gorsich. “That team has been invaluable and is leveling up our knowledge in a very tricky field.” Helen of Troy can also release software updates remotely to continue improving the experience after a customer takes a product home.