Kenneth Shinozuka: My simple invention, designed to keep my grandfather safe

TED 2014

Kenneth Shinozuka: My simple invention, designed to keep my grandfather safe (transcript)

Summary

I was very surprised that the speaker looked very young though from the title, he seemed to invent something. Furthermore, his name Shinozuka was a Japanese name and he spoke English fluently.

When he was four years old, he saw his grandfather who had Alzheimer's disease wandering. Then the wandering became a big stress for his family because one of the family had to stay awake to stop it all night.

He became really concerned about his family's health as well as his grandfather's safety so he started to search for a solution.

One night, when he was looking after his grandfather, the moment his grandfather's foot landed on the floor, he hit upon a good idea  to put a pressure sensor on the heel of his grandfather's foot.

The plan was that its sensor could send an audible alert to family's smartphone by body weight. He was six years old at that time.  

After that, when an elderly family friend fell down in the bathroom, and suffered severe injuries. He thought of a sensor of a smart bathroom system again.

He continued thinking that sensors can improve the quality of life of the elderly and his family could sleep much better at night without having to worry about his grandfather wandering.

It took a lot of time to translate his ideas into reality because he hadn't graduated from kindergarten when he had the ideas.

Finally, he created a wearable sensor that was thin and flexible enough to be worn comfortably on the bottom of the patient's foot.

Over ten years, his grandfather's condition got worse and worse, however, its sensor was detecting his grandfather wandering many times and it had a 100 % success.

He continued studying to improve patient care, to create other products, and to collect the data of his sensor to lead to a cure for the disease.

He hopes that his inventions can change people's lives for the better.

Alzheimer’s disease is the brain disease. It mainly affects old people and results in the gradual loss of memory, speech, movement, and the ability to think clearly. It becomes a big stress for its families and a big problem for the aging population, especially Japan.

Words in this story

dementia / a disease or condition that exists esp. among older people, and that results in the gradual loss of mental abilities, such as the ability to think, reason, and remember things

look after / take care