Olivia Goodreau suffered from Lyme disease after being bitten by a tick. During the summer Olivia and her family travelled from Colorado, where they live, to the Lake of the Ozarks. There, she was bitten by a tick she didn’t see.

Elliot Miller had to have a cochlear implant inserted. However, after going through the orientation process, he thought it didn’t fully prepare him for the everyday life. “Shortly after switching the implant on I was out for a jog and I could hear this jingling sound and I couldn’t figure out what it was,” Miller said, “When I would stop [running] the jingling would stop. It was only when I got home that I realised it was the coins in my pocket.”

After losing his dad to diabetes, Óscar Reyes decided to create a way to prevent this disease from taking other people’s lives.

Now at 19 he developed a bracelet and mobile app that help detect different diseases.

“The idea came up 6 years ago when my dad was suffering from diabetes. As I watched him get worse, I started to investigate how I could help him feel better, minimize diabetes symptoms and improve his quality of life”, Reyes said.

When Kai Leong was in the seventh grade, his grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. However, before she received the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, doctors thought she was suffering from depression.

Due to the disease, she experienced obsessive thoughts and problems during therapy. "During therapy, I was asked to keep a diary to note down any behaviour that I have been repeating constantly. But there would be times when I didn't have the diary with me or I would tell myself that maybe I don't need to jot it down. This behaviour hampered my therapy and in turn affected my routine", said Kaajal.

Simin Nasseri had several family members and friends who suffered from arthritis and other diseases, which caused finger deformities.

That is when Nasseri noticed that the supports available were not strong, comfortable or resizable enough. She then created a new support made of soft polymer with inserted sheets of aluminium, steel or carbon-fiber. This invention is softer and more durable than the other existent options.

Mark Zuckerberg, known for being the Facebook CEO, noticed that his wife, Priscilla, was having a hard time sleeping through the night.

"Being a mom is hard, and since we've had kids Priscilla has had a hard time sleeping through the night," said Zuckerberg. "She'll wake up and check the time on her phone to see if the kids might wake up soon, but then knowing the time stresses her out and she can't fall back asleep”, he added.

“Growing up with friends who later became depressed due to family and life issues that could lead to suicide triggered the need to try and help many more people. I took the initiative to develop this app due to my philanthropic nature,” Karim said.

His solution app is dubbed ‘Masiri’ and it allows users to share what they are going through and get help.

Jean-Max Dumond’s son suffers from selective mutism, which impedes him from communicating properly in social settings.

To help his son, Dumond created a robot with parts recovered from electronic devices such as televisions and radios. He then used paper mache on the face of the robot and PVC, a lightweight plastic used in construction, for the different body parts of the robot.

Erin has always been a huge fan of Michael Fox's movies. Michael Fox is the star of the ‘Back to the Future’ films. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age 29.

Erin was 15 when she was watching the actor Michael Fox and had a ‘Eureka’ moment. She noticed that his expressions lacked emotions. He also had a droopy smile and upturned eyebrow. Looking back at Fox's work, Erin also noticed that his expressions had started to change even before he was diagnosed, in 1991.

Codilia Gapare was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was prepared to wear a wig and draw on her eyebrows. However, when she lost her eyebrows, she noticed that the traditional fake eyebrows did not work because they require hairs to be attached to.

"They dropped without lashes underneath them to hold them up and then, because my few remaining lashes were so fragile from treatment when I removed them, the glue pulled them out too", said Codilia.

Violet Orrick, suffered from separation anxiety while attending nursery when she was four years old.

This led her to create a ‘hug button’. It started with Violet drawing of a heart on her arm that she can press and when she misses her parents, and which would allow her to send love and a warm hug to them. The parents also have a button matching on their arm. The hug button is composed of a 'V' for Violet and an 'M' for mummy.

Luke lost his dad by suicide when he was 2 years old. After the dad’s death, Luke’s mom, Paula Toledo, was worried that Luke would experience secondary loss as she cared for his 2-week-old brother, and so she became interested in play therapy, which offers children tools and language to work with anxiety.

When Anne Currie was 5-years-old, she underwent her first congenital heart surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital. Following additional procedures, Anne, now in her 30s, leads a happy and healthy life.

In 2016, Amuge’s aunt was very sick and almost died. It was later discovered that she suffered from diabetes.

That experience led Amuge to develop, with the help of some colleagues, an app that helps detect diabetes early on. The solution is called Blood Sugar Zero (BSZ) mobile application.

Brody Moreland was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that occurs when a baby’s spine doesn't form normally in the womb. After doctors discovered the condition 20 weeks into Ally Moreland’s pregnancy, they gave the couple a 50/50 chance that their firstborn would be able to walk. Right after birth, Brody underwent back closure surgery and skull surgery to drain extra fluid from his brain. Four more surgeries followed in the next six months. "But his mobility didn’t improve: He’s basically paralyzed from the chest down", Taylor said. He has arm control, but no trunk control.

Gina Adams, a mother of two in Michigan, USA, saw firsthand the toll that Parkinson's disease took on her stepfather, especially when he was unable to do everyday things like button his own shirt.

"He was a brilliant engineer and a guitar player, and when he could no longer button his own shirt, it was devastating for him. I saw my stepdad with this whole closet of clothes he couldn't wear", Gina observed.

Ofir Aharon was working on his doctorate in electro-optics when his mother was diagnosed with melanoma, a common type of skin cancer that can be deadly. The disease affects people of all colours and races.

“She could have detected the melanoma before it became cancerous, but she missed a doctor appointment,” said Aharon. That made him wonder why the cancer was not detected in its earlier stages, which would have helped his mother recover quicker from the disease.

Dom's daughter, Issy, was 13 years old when she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called Ewings Sarcoma in 2011. She was treated at six different hospitals and had 15 rounds of chemotherapy as well as many blood transfusions. Issy eventually travelled to the United States for pioneering Proton Beam Therapy.

After Richard Chan’s mother suffered a stroke, she fell and remained helpless for several hours without the possibility of calling for help. It became difficult for her to communicate on the phone.

That is when her son Chan, who is also a telecommunications engineer, tried to look for a phone that could make communication easier and at the same time provide better security. Since he didn’t find anything on the market, he started working on developing a new product.