Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2014. It reports news from that month: Shinozuka was then 15 and one of 18 finalists, and the prize details, including a 10-day Galápagos trip and $50,000 in scholarship funding, are those of the 2014 fair. The outcome of the competition is not mentioned.
One of the finalists in the Google Science Fair is 15 years old. His name is Kenneth Shinozuka, and he has earned a place in this Google competition, which looks for ideas that help make the world a better place.
This teenager’s project doesn’t cure Alzheimer’s, but it does help patients and their families.
One of the problems facing families with a relative who has Alzheimer’s is that the patient may get up in the middle of the night, disoriented, and leave the house. According to the statistics, 65% of Alzheimer’s patients are prone to wandering and getting lost, especially at night.
The young man’s grandfather had several accidents because his carer fell asleep, and on one occasion the police found him on a highway several kilometres from home. That is why Shinozuka focused on a solution to a problem he had experienced first-hand.
To help his grandfather and millions of patients and carers, Shinozuka created a system that wirelessly triggers an alert on a smartphone when the patient gets out of bed.
To make this possible, he built a very thin, highly pressure-sensitive film sensor with a coin-sized circuit that can be placed in a sock or shoe. When the patient gets out of bed and puts a foot on the floor, the pressure makes the system send an alert to an app that he also designed and coded himself.
During a six-month trial, his prototypes detected 100% of the 437 times his grandfather got out of bed, so far without a single false alarm.
Shinozuka is now in the process of manufacturing hundreds of sensors, which he will donate to care homes for Alzheimer’s patients.
He says his family was deeply moved by this simple solution, which can detect a problem before it happens, and that at that moment he was struck by the power of technology to change people’s lives.
He is one of 18 finalists in the Google competition. The winner will receive a 10-day trip to the Galápagos Islands, a visit to Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport and $50,000 in scholarship funding.
This story was originally reported by Business Insider and has been adapted.
Further reading
Featured image: Rockportguy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
