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Ana Duarte

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Man creates new sign language gestures to help his blind and deaf friend to enjoy football games

Jose lost his vision and hearing when he was nine years old. In 2015, e met Cesar, a man, who, like him, loves football.

Cesar learned sign language and then he came up with a set of hand gestures in order to communicate a football match, in real-time, to his friend, for when they watch games together.

The man mimics the players' position by moving Jose’s hands on a scaled-down football pitch in front of them.

Man develops personalised DVD to help autistic kid

Rodrigo came up with this DVD after reading about Miguel’s mother Fernanda Torres reporting, on social media, her son’s meltdowns on social media, after the film had been released on Netflix.

Miguel would watch Finding Nemo every day on Netflix. However, on the morning of January 1st 2019, while most of the people were sleeping, Miguel was turning on the TV to watch his favourite film. But it had been removed.

Man creates the world’s first electrical wheelchair

John Counsell, a World War II survivor, was shot through the back. This made him become a paraplegic. He was satisfied with the manual wheelchairs, but then he realised that quadriplegics would benefit from something more sophisticated.

As a patient and advocate for Canada’s veterans, he requested the National Research Council and George Klein to build a new kind of wheelchair.

George accepted the challenge and ended up considering it the most rewarding project of his career.

Patient creates device to let him know when his bladder is full

With the help of some friends, Mike developed Uri-Go – a sensor that connects to a smartphone app that lets the user knows when you need to go.

The sensor his used near the skin, on the underwear area, above the pubic bone. It bounces a radio signal and sends the data to a smartphone, notifying the user about the bladder status.

Woman invents device to help lift patients safely

After spending six years developing this product, Diane came up with a patented lifting belt that can easily be placed on a person who has fallen and needs assistance to get back on their feet.

“Applying the belt, lifting the patient, and then removing the belt can be done in less than 5 minutes”, says on the official website.

The device can accommodate the small and frail patient, all the way up to the morbidly obese patient. It helps to prevent skin tears, bruising, dislocations and other problems.

Man develops device to hear cracking knees

Omer suffered knee pain himself and had been thinking about developing such a device for some time. He was a discus thrower and a three-time NCAA All-American at Stanford University and the school record holder.

Because of whirling around for several years, and because of the stress and strain of weight required in the training, his knees started to crack.

“I would always feel like my knee was creaking or popping more if I was putting more stress on it,” the professor said.

Patient creates a new type of surgery and cures himself

This led him to be bedridden for 11 years. The treatments weren’t helping and the doctors didn’t know what to do. That’s when Doug knew he had to take action.

He started researching, trying to find a solution. He had found a 2,200-page endocrinology textbook near a garbage can while he was in college. In this book he found an important passage discussing how adrenal disorders could mirror thyroid disorders.

Woman who broke her collarbone creates device to help her recover

“I left outpatients in terrible pain with an inadequate collar and cuff sling, as most people do. I was desperate to ease the excruciating pain and somehow avoid inevitable surgery and I cobbled together a crude prototype. It eased the pain and I healed really well and much faster than expected”, she explained.

Man builds device to help alert caregivers and the doctor if an elderly falls

“It was not the first time my grandmother fell in her home in the United States. But that time, we were all there as we witnessed the fall where she hit her head. She immediately got up and told everyone she was okay. No one paid much attention until in the days that followed when she complained of dizziness. When we brought her to the hospital, the doctors found a blood clot in the brain. That same day she went into a coma and later died.

Team develops app to help cope with dementia

Stewart and Mark came together as musicians, in 2014, and their app was a tool which allows non-musicians to create music. It was also after Stewart’s son, Kieran started working on a course project for the Dementia Action Alliance that Stewart began to think of ways music could be applied to help the condition., that they started thinking of ways to apply music to cope with dementia.

Grandson creates system to help his grandmother find phone numbers

Encarna Alés, born in 1944, was forced to leave school to work, so she never got the chance to learn to write and read. This made impossible for her to use a phone book.

So her grandson Pedro started making drawings, when he was 11, in a notebook to help her find her contacts’ numbers so she could remember which number was which.

Man creates remote control system so that his disable son can play with train models

Neil’s sons have limitations. Zeke has cerebral palsy and Ben is a quadriplegic. They played with train models, so the singer built the TrainMaster Command Control system, an electronic control system for O scale 3-rail model trains and toy trains that mainly ran from 1994 to 2006.

Woman creates reusable sanitary pads

In Ethiopia, starting menstruations means that the girl is mature enough to get married. However, early marriage often means child pregnancy and obstetric fistula. That’s why a lot of Ethiopian girls feel ashamed when they’re on period, suffering in silence to the shame and fear. Also, most of these girls aren’t able to afford sanitary pads and tampons. They use old pieces of clothing instead (sometimes they use large scarves to cover themselves if their clothes became stained), which is not hygienic and can compromise their health.

Mother writes children’s book to raise awareness about her son’s food allergies

The book tells the story of Austin since was diagnosed, explained what to do to keep him safe regarding his food allergies. It provides examples of what Austin needs to do in the event that he ingests an allergen, as well as what friends and family can do to prevent ingestion, and key concepts relating to cross-contamination. The story is also about how even though the boy has severe allergies, he is still able to be a kid and participate in his favourite activities.

Mother creates bracelet with visual cues to help autistic patients

Quickly after her son was diagnosed with autism, Denise went to learn more about visual cues (single-image pictures that help those with language and communication challenges perform everyday tasks). This process takes advantage of the fact that people with autism think in pictures, so visual cues help them follow a schedule, manage behaviour, tolerate new activities, and communicate with others.

Grieving mother designs special cards

One of the reasons that led Hannah to launch this line of motivational cards is that she felt she wasn’t recognised as a mum after Dexy’s passing. The inventor also wanted to do something that would help support mothers in similar situations.

“Afterwards people forgot I was a mother, but I hadn’t stopped being one just because my baby died. Mother’s Day cards usually talk about tying children’s shoelaces, playing and looking after them. For my cards I imagined what Dexy would say to me if he could”, the mother explained.

Man invents low-cost, high-quality biossensing hardware for brain computer interfacing

All of these situations led Conor to become a brain enthusiast, so he started hacking EEG by referring to some online and open-source tutorials.

Joel Murphy, the other OpenBCI co-founder, had created the Pulse Sensor, an optical heart rate monitor (with Yury Gitman). Conor met him because he had been hired as a subcontractor and helped in firmware development of this project. The Pulse Sensor got a lot of interest from the public, which led to a successful Kickstarter campaign (in 2011).

Hearing impaired boy creates special placard to help hearing impaired drivers identify themselves to the police

Jack lost his hearing after he came down with meningitis as a child. He has cochlear implants.

He started having driving lessons, he started thinking about the challenges other hearing impaired drivers could face on the road.

So he created a special placard that can be displayed by hearing impaired drivers, so that police officers know they may have trouble understanding their commands.

Father creates app to help his autistic daughters

Easeedo tries to solve the problem of ‘Executive Functioning’ by recognising and managing anxiety and other emotions are often difficult for individuals on the Autistic Spectrum. “We have created a software tool that supports both. The issues tackled by EaseeDo, although common in Autistic people are not limited to that group. Many other groups, such as dyslexia, ADHD and dementia can be affected by the same issues”, he explained.

Designer creates prosthetics to help amputee ballet dancers

Marie-t (named after Swedish ballet dancer Marie Taglioni) consists of a prosthetic leg is made from a 3D printing socket, foam-injected rational moulded foot, carbon fibre, stainless steel toe and rubber grip toe (to help provide the dancer with balance and momentum during rotations).

What’s innovative about this gadget is that, unlike traditional artificial limbs, which are designed to mimic the human body, it enables amputee ballet dancers to enhance their performance.

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