When faced with the shock of police who escorted his grandfather, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, home wearing his pajamas, Kenneth Shinozuka decided to do something about it, and sure enough he did. The 15 year old has created a device that could potentially help the caretakers of patients with Alzheimer’s.
Shinozuka has created a wearable sensor that is attached to the foot or the sock of the patient. The sensor is activated when the person steps on it, thus triggering the sensor and sending an alert to their caretaker via an app. This will allow caretakers to note when their patient begins wandering around.
Before unveiling it to the public, he tested it on his grandfather over a six month period and found that for every instance his grandfather got up to walk, the sensor triggered the app accordingly and apparently there have been no false alarms. In fact he has since received the Scientific American Science in Action award for his efforts.
As per his original plan, Shinozuka is now in the process of having hundreds of these wearable sensors donated to nursing homes in hopes that it will help caretakers better look after their patients. It is unclear if he plans to commercialize his device, but speaking to NBC News, he was quoted as saying, “I’d like to solve some of the mysteries of the brain, and invent tools to ultimately, I think, cure Alzheimer’s and other mental conditions that our aging population suffers from.”
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