Four Simon Fraser University students hope if they build a better mattress, people will buy it.

The mattress in this case contains a monitoring system to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Four students with the school of engineering science designed it as part of a class project. They had to develop a product and select a name for their company. The name they selected was ZenTech, which they hope to incorporate in the near future.

"We had to go from the initial stages of designing it to a prototype that's actually functional and working," says Mike Sjoerdsma, one of the students involved with ZenTech. "The goal is to continue developing the product now that we've finished the course."

For the meantime, ZenTech is a part-time pre-occupation for the four would-be entrepreneurs.

The mattress contains a sensor, which picks up an infant's movements and breathing. An alarm will go off if no breathing is sensed for 20 seconds. The Infant Monitoring System is designed to be as non-intrusive as possible and as such, no attachments are connected to the infant. A cable in the mattress is hooked up to a base unit, which includes a power switch.

Sjoerdsma says the team plans to seek a patent and try to market its potentially life-saving product.

Visit www.zentechcanada.com for more information.