Kids these days…
A Minnesota college student has invented an app that prevents night terrors after witnessing his father, an Iraq war veteran, struggle with them himself.
Macalaster College senior, Tyler Skluzacek, was in the sixth grade when his dad, Sgt. First Class Patrick Skluzacek, was deployed to Iraq. When he returned home, he displayed classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including night terrors.
In September, Tyler entered a 36-hour coding contest called HackDC, the theme of which was helping veterans. He and his team created a top prize-winning smartwatch app called myBivy.
The app tracks an individual’s heartbeat and movements in order to detect when night terrors are about to occur. The owner’s smartwatch or smartphone will then use sound or vibration to bring its user out of the deepest cycle of sleep and prevent night terrors while allowing them to remain asleep.
“After a couple weeks of tracking the soldier, we can find the exact symptoms of the onset of the panic attack and try to use the watch or use the android phone to disrupt that or take them out of the deep sleep, but keep them asleep,” Tyler explained in an interview to People magazine. (Yes, that is not normally a source of my information, but I felt Tyler’s efforts to help vets like his father deserved kudos).
Tyler’s team won $1,500 through HackDC to continue their work on the app, and they’ve also raised an additional $10,577 on Kickstarter (and climbing…with an original goal of $1,194). The team has been working with the VA and sleep experts and hopes to bring the app to clinical testing by next spring.
Given that in the U.S. alone, around 3.6 million veterans are diagnosed with PTSD, let’s hope they raise however much they need to maximize the app’s effectiveness. If you want to donate to the cause, click here. (Legal Meets Practical, LLC has no connection with Tyler or his team in any way).
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That is awesome, I hope they get the bugs out of it!!!!