Uma was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 11. Since then, she has been admitted four times to the hospital due to seizures. Some of her epileptic attacks occurred in places where no one knew how to help her.

That inspired her to invent Cocoon, a device that protects the head from injuries during a seizure. It is portable and includes first-aid instructions for bystanders.

Riley is quadriplegic as a result of his cerebral palsy. This means that paddling with his family and friends along the river, one of his favourite activities, was always challenging for him.

To make it easier, Riley, with the help of his dad, invented a customised device that supports his spine and allows him to sit upright on the paddleboard, while staying safely attached to it.

At age 37, Kristy was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a group of disorders that affect the connective tissue in the body. This means that people who suffer from it can have problems with the skin, bones, blood vessels and other organs.

Since EDS is a chronic disease, there were many things to take care of, such as paperwork, doctor appointments and medical data. This made Kristy feel overwhelmed. Apart from her own condition, one of her sons suffers from cerebral palsy, which is also a chronic disease and can also be difficult to manage.

In 2010, Jenny was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. She and her husband, Paul, wanted to do everything they could to give her more time to live.

After several rounds of stem cell transplants, they started to look for clinical trials of new drugs. They found 450 open trials for her disease, but information was lacking about which one could benefit her more. She chose the eight trials she found most promising and received a response from two of them.

After being diagnosed with high blood pressure in 2016, Cameron was told by the doctor to reduce his salt intake. However, Cameron knew he already had a low-salt diet and felt lost about what factors in his daily habits were mainly contributing to the elevated blood pressure.

As he was informed, high blood pressure increases the risk strokes and heart attacks, so it was a priority for him to find a way to adapt his lifestyle in order to decrease his blood pressure.

Laura’s son, João, was born in 2012. When he was almost two years old, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy is a group of permanent movement disorders that appear in young children. It can cause poor coordination, muscle weakness and tremors, as well as problems with sensation, vision, hearing and speaking, thinking and reasoning.

Since the diagnosis, Laura has been trying to help ser son improve and better cope with daily life. At the age of six João could already sit alone and talk and he has now, at age seven, a very similar routine to other kids.

Due to breast cancer, Fran went through a double mastectomy. She decided not to have breast reconstruction surgery, which left her struggling to find an appropriate bra to wear.

That is when she decided to invent special bras for women who undergo a mastectomy.

The fact that Fran already owned a bra company, Tomboyx, made things easier, but building a bra that would perfectly fit and empower women in these circumstances was still going to be a challenge.

Being diagnosed HIV-positive in 2012 gave Alex motivation to dedicate himself to this issue. In 2016, he founded Life4me+, a non-profit that fights AIDS, Hepatitis C and other sexually transmitted diseases, and the corresponding Life4me+ app.

Влітку 2009 року Джейн отримала струс мозку. Одним із симптомів була тривога.
Оскільки Джейн була дизайнером ігор і знала, як ігри можуть допомогти нам протистояти труднощам, вона вирішила подолати свою тривогу, створивши «Jane the Concussion Slayer», назву якої вона пізніше змінила на «SuperBetter».

After 13 years in the military as a combat engineer, Joe was left with both physical and emotional pain. ‘Call it post-traumatic stress, guilt, I don't know. Whatever you want to call it, I started going through it’, he said.

His main physical symptom was headaches, for which he could not find a solution.

That is when one day, while driving, he accidentally rubbed the tips of his sunglasses over his temples and felt relieved.

The next day he tried to look for an actual temple massager he could buy, but there was none in the market. So, he decided to invent one.

When Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer, at age 36, she felt, like many women who go through the same situation, scared and overwhelmed. Due to her disease, she underwent a modified radical mastectomy.

After leaving the hospital, she realized that she did not have anything to wear and, after searching in the market at the time, she could not find any healing-specific types of garment.

That is when Linda came up with her invention. She designed a special camisole for women who have just undergone mastectomy.

Bodhisatva’s mother, Amruta, suffers from spondylosis and back pain. Noticing how she struggled to clean the bathroom floors, he decided to innovate.

The young inventor came up with the Swachchta Suvidha Brush. It consists of a slipper with a bathroom cleaning brush glued to the sole.

At first Bodhisatva used simply a cleaning brush attached to a discarded cycle tire. Then, he attached cotton belts to the wooden base to turn into a slipper. In his last upgrade he eventually attached a proper slipper to the brush.

David Fajgenbaum was a medical student when he fell ill. After being wrongly diagnosed with lymphoma, the doctors finally diagnosed him with ‘Idiopathic Multicentric Castleman disease’, a rare, potentially fatal lymphoproliferative disease, which provokes an overgrowth of cells in the body's lymph nodes.

‘They told me my kidneys, liver, and bone marrow were shutting down. My immune system was attacking my vital organs.’, he explained.

Kursat Ceylan is blind. Realizing that cities are still not prepared enough to facilitate the daily life of the visually impaired, he innovated by creating a smart cane, called WeWalk.

'In these days, we are talking about flying cars, but these people have been using just a plain stick. As a blind person, when I am at the Metro station, I don’t know which is my exit… I don’t know which bus is approaching… which stores are around me. That kind of information can be provided with the WeWalk’, Kursat told CNN.

Dana Edwards’ son, Tanner Edwards, suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Duchenne is a progressive neuromuscular disorder that can cause loss of motor, pulmonary, and cardiac function as well as premature death.

As a visually impaired man, he was inspired to create a solution to help people like him become more independent. So he developed an electric vehicle.

It can drive 12km/h and weighs approximately 80 Kg. The prototype was created using a former wheelchair with a mounted car seat and two car batteries. The structure is surrounded by a framework made of steel. It also includes four ultrasound sensors, which measure the distance of four meters.

Wazeer Hayath once saw a blind man who was having trouble navigating on the street as several objects and people appeared on his way.

This inspired him to innovate. He created a special white cane that works as an ‘eye’ for blind people. Inside the cane there are battery-powered sensors. These sensors get activated and send an audio alert when they detect an object bigger than 2,54 cm (one inch).

Louis was three years old when he became blind after being injured in the eye while playing at his dad’s shop. Despite all medical efforts, an eye infection developed on both eyes, causing him complete bilateral blindness.

Back then, the reading system for the blind simply consisted of raised letters that could be traced with a finger, which was slow and difficult to use.

Julio Vazquez’s friend, Rami Wehbe, had a cerebrovascular accident, also known as a stroke. This happens when blood flow to a certain part of the brain is stopped, either by a blockage or by the rupture of a blood vessel.

Due to this, Rami was unable to use his right hand to play Zelda, a famous fantasy action-adventure video game.

This inspired Julio to invent a solution that would allow his friend to play using only his left hand.

Nino Rosenberg suffered from polio (a short word for poliomyelitis), an infectious disease caused by a virus called poliovirus. In some cases, the infection can lead to paralysis and permanent disability, as is the case with Nino.