When Conny Karlsson became a father, he began to think about the air his child inhaled. As an anesthesiologist, he was aware that it contained a lot of pollution, but there was no help available. That's why he created his own invention, a kind of air bubble that you put in the pram.
Warp News met the inventor and entrepreneur Conny Karlsson at the world fair in Dubai, where he participated in a delegation led by RISE, Research Institutes of Sweden.
Babybubl, as the first product is called, sucks in and filters the air and then sprays it over the baby. It creates a bubble that removes 80 percent of all air pollutants.
In addition, they have created an app that reports the quality of the air in real-time, so you can avoid the worst places and over time contribute information to politicians and city planners to fix the problem.
Bubl aims to launch the product in 2022. Conny Karlsson has been working on it for almost four years.
How did you take the step of leaving a secure life as a doctor to become an inventor and entrepreneur?
"I discovered that I had come up with something that did not exist before. It was a known problem, but the knowledge was poor and there were no products on the market. It triggered me to continue, to see what it can do. At one stage it consumed so much time that I had to ask myself the question: Should I continue as a doctor or commit to this in full?"
How did you make that decision?
"I went through the worst-case scenario, what is the worst that can happen? I came to the conclusion that it wasn't too bad. I would then have to go back to work with something I loved. After that, the choice was quite easy, even if it was difficult to go from a well-paid, safe and secure job to working unpaid and trying to find financing, "says Conny Karlsson.
How did you proceed with the invention itself, you are not an engineer. How did you do it?
"I started to think very much initially. From the very start it was about my previous profession to control the environment. How could one control the environment? My first idea was to have a cover over the pram. But when we conducted tests in RISE's laboratory in Umeå it turned out that we don't need a cover, the air purifier alone was sufficient. "
You can read more about Conny Karlsson and his baby bubble at get-bubl.com.
