Coordination of respiration, heart rate and swallowing in preterm and term neonates has been subject of various studies in the past; its impeccable functioning is a key criterion to be fulfilled before infants are discharged home from the NICU. Whether coordination abilities depend only on gestational age and how they can be diagnosed objectively remains controversial. Also, the ideal time point of starting to introduce suck feeds and to challenge coordination of breathing and swallowing is unknown and largely remains a matter of trial and error with the risk of causing iatrogenic aspirations of milk if babies are not ready for suck feeds. Successful coordination of swallowing and breathing is generally considered as a higher neurological function and it does represent a mile stone in overall child development. Therefore, measurement of its level of functioning could have the potential to serve as a predictor for neurological outcome. However, it is yet unknown to what extent difficulties in preterm infants allow predictions concerning their neurological development and future outcome. One of the major reasons for these unsolved questions lies in the lack of diagnostic tools to objectively measure suck-swallow-breathing coordination with sufficient accuracy, which make a precise analysis of coordination patterns in preterm infants almost impossible. Considering the relevance of these questions, it seems important to develop tools to observe coordination of breathing, heart rate and swallowing in neonates with possibly greater accuracy.