Salus — An Ultrasonic Cap for the Blind

It is estimated that over 3 million people in the U.S. alone are blind or visually-impaired in the better-seeing eye after correction. The loss of useable sight makes daily activities such as walking around—whether in one's home or out in public—severely more challenging and dangerous. Visually-impaired individuals need a way to detect head-level obstacles during walking (tree branches, street signs, door frames, etc.) while not disrupting their vital senses, in order to provide an extra level of security in addition to the conventional blind cane. The Salus overhead module sits atop the brim of a baseball cap, using an ultrasonic sensor to detect potentially-hazardous obstacles above shoulder height.

Ferrofoot — Foot Brace Against Foot Drop

“Foot drop” is a condition that prevents an individual from lifting the front portion of their foot, causing their foot to drag along the ground when they walk. There are two main existing solutions for foot drop: ankle foot orthotics (AFOs) and nerve stimulation devices. These solutions are either very expensive but effective or cheap and ineffective. Foot drop patients need a device that both supports the foot while allows for a normal walk cycle and is also cost effective. 

SAFETY — An App that Predicts and Prevents Panic Attacks 

Over 1 in 3 teens worldwide suffer from mental health disorders. These issues can include panic disorders, which often involve chronic anxiety and panic attacks. Panic attacks are intense fear responses that can cause severe physical and mental symptoms, impacting social life and overall health. Teens with panic disorders need to recognize the signs of an attack to prepare and take necessary precautions. Parents of teens with anxiety disorders also need ways to track and mitigate the impact of panic attacks, ensuring a safe environment. SAFETY aims to use machine learning software to analyze spikes and trends in heart rate, detecting anomalies that predict panic attack cycles. Our app works with therapists and medical professionals to prevent panic attacks and includes functions to alert guardians, helping them better manage periods of panic.

Riptide — Resource Sharing for Dyslexia

Students with dyslexia need a way to easily find and access accessible PDFs, eBooks, and audiobooks, so as to improve their overall learning experience. Riptide is building software that offers a specialized library of resources for the dyslexic community. 

Alivio — Ultraportable Air Quality Monitoring

Adolescents with asthma need a way to quickly and accurately identify the air quality in their direct vicinity so that they can be prepared and take necessary precautions. Parents with children who have asthma need a way to track and determine possible harms in the environment for their children so that they can keep their kids safe and happy. The Alivio bracelet has a precise air quality sensor that can alert asthmatics to their surroundings immediately.

GreenSwing — Using Doors to Power Batteries

AjaNikiya Estro, the founder of Compassion Kind, needs a low-cost, portable, and easy-to-use method of harvesting renewable energy to power and charge medical tools and appliances that will be used at her pop-up health clinic in rural Malawi. GreenSwing utilizes the renewable energy harvested from the kinetic energy of a door swing to power high-capacity rechargeable batteries at an incredibly low cost.

Flashback — An App & Hardware Combination for Faceblindness

Prosopagnosia patients require facial recognition aid to help them navigate the interactions of everyday life. As there is no “cure,” prosopagnosia patients require more effective solutions for recognizing faces and better adapting to social customs. Flashback aims to develop a facial recognition application to aid patients with prosopagnosia, a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces.

Kyntic — A Portable Tic Tracker for CBIT Therapy 

Around 1 in every 162 children are affected by Tourette Syndrome (CDC), and suffer from incredibly disabling and uncontrollable motor tic symptoms. The most common treatment is CBIT therapy, however due to critical flaws in the current data collection model it lacks efficiency. CBIT therapists need a more streamlined and accurate way for their patients to log the frequency, intensity and environment of their tics in order to provide quality individualized treatment.

The team also developed an application to track tic data. Check it out!

KnowMe — Unmasking Adversity, Building Community

Growing up is not easy. Every teen is fighting some sort of battle in their personal life. Navigating hardships without friends who understand what you're going through can be isolating and scary. Since adversity is often concealed at school or on social media, it's difficult to find local peer support for your unique situation. KnowMe is a digital anonymous matching system for teens to forge authentic, one-on-one connections over shared adversities—from experiencing parental divorce to dealing with a chronic illness. 

PERCH — Personalizing Physician-Patient Communication

More than 90 million adults in the United States are estimated to have limited health literacy: an inadequate ability to understand and use health information to inform health-related decisions. Limited health literacy impedes the ability of patients to achieve shared understanding with physicians and actively participate in their health decisions, and is associated with adverse outcomes of care. This problem disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, who are at greater risk of experiencing health disparities deriving from poorer quality of communication with their physicians. PERCH aims to tailor healthcare communication to patients' needs and foster the development of trusting patient-physician relationships by providing a framework for patients to identify their communication needs and actionable strategies for physicians to address them.

Eye2i — A Pregnancy Test for the Visually Impaired

Pregnancy tests are not accessible to moderately and severely visually impaired women. Current workarounds are privacy-invading and cumbersome. Eye2i is a low-cost reusable add-on to pregnancy tests that senses negative or positive results and converts to textile bumps.

SearchMentalHealth — AI-Powered Mental Health Services Locater 

Young people, due to a lack of education or awareness, often don’t know how and where to find mental health services or which services are appropriate for them (e.g., inpatient vs. outpatient). Call lines can be intimidating, online surveys with complex medical and legal jargon can be confusing to navigate, and 200-page PDF resource guides can be arduous and annoying to read. For youth and families who may not know the next step in getting help, SearchMentalHealth provides a simple, approachable way to identify services by enabling users to type out their situation like a diary entry and immediately get matched with services.

Expresso —Personalized Public Speaking Education Powered by AI

Public speaking is a struggle, but it’s also an important tool. 85% of entry-level jobs seek oral communication skills + confidence. 75% of people fear public speaking; public speaking training is key to overcoming that fear. $200+ is the average cost of public speaking coaching per hour. Expresso is a low-cost tool for people to develop public speaking confidence through AI-powered speech analysis, personalized speech drills, content tips, and progress metrics. 

MODAP — A Device for Wildfire Geoawareness

Dr. Robert Gann — a firefighter, chief, and mechanical engineering specialist in Colorado — needs a novel localization and vision solution where there exists terrain blocks for cellular signal, smoke blocks of satellite, and legal blocks against drones because of his sense of responsibility for the lives of firefighters under his command. MODAP is a modular, unpowered aerial platform designed for rapid sampling of information to aid firefighters in wildfire missions.