I want to tell you a little bit of a different story:
we've talked a lot about how technology is inevitable,
but our success, I think, will be defined by our compassion.
I woke up to an email from a mom in California,
telling me all about her daughter Anni.
Karen described her in such great detail;
her love of soccer, her love of dolphins,
and even how she was learning how to play guitar.
But there was one difference; she sent us a great picture of a beautiful girl,
but Anni was born without part of her right arm.
And imagine this was your daughter. She's an incredibly joyful kid
and she dreams of being a pediatric nurse
and making a difference in her community.
She's already taking her time at school
to be able to mentor and support students who require special needs.
But sometimes, in the classroom, or putting on your seatbelt in the car,
having two limbs can help.
And you and I take this for granted every day.
For a number of reasons,
access to medical grade prosthetics for children is challenging.
Whether it's through insurance, or just the great cost,
or because children grow quite quickly,
Anni has been underserved by this group.
Many doctors still recommend a hook device,
even in 2016.
More expensive devices that provide greater functionality
can be upwards of $40,000 in the United States.
That's a lot, and that's where my nonprofit comes in:
Limbitless Solutions.
You see? We're a human bionics company,
and that is we make bionic limbs for children at no cost to families.
And for just 350 USD,
we were able to give Anni a brand new bionic arm
at no cost to her family, at all.
She's learning how to play guitar. And she had a special brace before that
in order to learn, and she outgrew it, because children are always growing.
One advent of 3D printing is the ability for tailoring parts,
scaling, and low-cost upgrades.
Well, today, the arm isn't ready to turn Anni into Taylor Swift just yet.
Do you think we can get there?
Do you think our next 3D printed device will be sufficient for her to
go on into her professional career, and make a huge impact on her community?
I certainly hope so.
The best part about this technology is that it brought Anni hope.
It reignited her imagination,
and it challenged her to go and make an impact.
We affirm that her life really matters,
and we have high hopes for what she'll do.
And we brought her into a community of our other Bionic children.
They're going into classrooms all over the world.
And they're telling other kids to dream as well.
It's very exciting.
So, we're on the cusp of a whole new era of disability technologies.
Can we get there?
Can we enter into an era where the disability
does not define the individual?
Clearly, something has to be done.
One challenge is, is that disability is a global issue.
It affects all corners of the world.
In America, here in Dubai, and every other country.
And there's huge costs associated with disability,
that are shouldered by families, the individuals themselves,
and even their governments.
And the problem is not shrinking, it's certainly getting larger,
whether through humanitarian crises, through conflicts,
or just through growing human population.
According to the World Health Organization,
over a billion people in our world, about one in seven,
deal with some sort of disability in their lifetime.
When we look at those productivity losses or health care costs,
it's very clear that the technology has to improve,
and government is uniquely positioned to do this.
If we zoom out a little bit, and we look at just the countries
in Latin America, Africa, and Asia,
over 30 million people require prosthetic.
And that was an increase from 2006, that only required 26 million.
So the problem is not going away,
and it will continue to be a challenge for every country and every government.
Where I'm from, in United States,
what we found is that 32,000 children under the age of 16
have been born with a form of limb reduction.
And they're traditionally very underserved.
And that's just people who are born missing part of a limp.
When we add in amputations or accidents,
a 185,000 more Americans will lose a limb;
many of this from complications with diabetes.
And the costs are enormous, just in my country;
$12 billion!
That was the cost to insurance agencies in United States for one year
regarding limb reduction,
with an average cost per amputation of $70,000.
So this is a really big problem, and it needs a big solution.
If we look globally, in Angola, one in every 334 people has lost a limb.
That's a staggering amount of people who are in need of hope.
The 2010 earthquake in Haiti, it changed everything,
resulted in at least 6,000 amputations,
many for children who were then homeless and parentless.
That is the great challenge of our time.
We have all the technology,
we can do all of this, but our success will really be determined
by our commitment and our compassion.
So currently, I'm studying at the University of Central Florida
for my doctorate in mechanical engineering.
Growing up, my parents gave me incredible examples of compassion,
and my university taught me how to innovate.
Engineers love to solve problems.
I think it's just in a wiring, perhaps.
And about 2 years ago, while studying for my degrees in engineering,
a family reached out to me, whose local to our University,
and they asked me a very strange question,
not about aerodynamics, or about what it's like to go to college, they said:
"Could you build my son a bionic arm?"
I told them: "I'm not really sure how to do that,
but I think we could." And I took a team of my classmates and my friends,
and in about eight weeks, we had a brand new prototype for him.
And it was incredible, and it changed his life.
It's very exciting.
So we took our work and we started as students, really research scientists,
and we've transformed it. And what we found
was that this technology was not only applicable
for children with limb reduction,
or adults with limb reduction,
but we found an unusual crossover,
that people with muscular disorders, or quadriplegics,
that this can help them too.
And it's incredible.
We did it under the code name Xavier.
It took us less than 9 months to complete, and less than $1,000,
and I'm really excited to share it with you today.
So this is the project Xavier, hands-free wheelchair,
and it's an incredibly transformative piece of technology.
For people like Charlie, who are quadriplegics,
or battle with MS, or ALS,
traumatic brain injury, or just a quadriplegic amputation,
there's very few ways for them to restore their freedom.
He's confined to a wheelchair.
We were able to make that wheelchair hands-free,
giving him back that independence.
I wanted to tell you where this technology came from
and a little bit of how it works.
To drive it, we put these surface-mounted electrodes,
completely non-invasive, non-electrified, on the face.
And with your facial gestures, a clinch of the jaw, a twitch of the smile,
you can drive anywhere you want to go,
changing everything for people like Charlie.
And where it started; a few years ago, I met Jordan.
Jordan is now, a quite good friend of mine.
When she was 8 years old, the doctors found a decaying neuromuscular disorder.
Within a few months, she lost her ability to dance.
And with a little bit longer, she was then confined to a power wheelchair
with a ventilator, just to be able to breathe.
But Jordan is one of the strongest people I know,
and she's incredibly compassionate,
and she finished her degree at her university, recently graduating,
and just founded a nonprofit dedicated to teaching other students
how to pursue their dreams. and fully live a life.
It's an incredible story and she's filled with the compassion.
With her eye tracking monitor,
she writes a blog that goes all over the world,
and it encourages people with disability,
regular people, people just like me,
and I couldn't be more proud to call her my friend.
And this technology will be able to help Jordan,
because her challenge is that the disease will progress
and she may lose the strength in her hand in order to control her joystick.
But when that happens, if it happens, we'll be ready.
And for people with... like Jordan, or people with ALS, or MS,
new opportunities are showing up.
And that is what happens when you infuse technology with compassion.
So, at my university, we have incredible professors,
many of which I've been a great student and learned from,
and we're really excited, because they're partnering
with people all over the world to form new solutions.
And we took our laboratory, which is the next generation bionics laboratory
at the University of Central Florida, and we're taking smart sensors,
additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, for metallics, ceramics,
biology, stem cells, we're putting it all together.
We're infusing it with smart technology, smart sensors,
and of course, compassion.
And it's going to change everything, we think.
We have great hopes for building a global platform
to deliver arms like this,
not just in the United States.
Because the majority of my emails, now, come into my inbox,
hundreds of emails, from parents all over the world
about 60 countries, asking for help.
And I want to be able to help them.
Obviously, we have a challenge of scale, and we need the global community,
we need the international partners to work with their children on the ground,
that we can send data, we can send bionics,
and just that easy as clicking an email.
And we're very excited. We have these emails from...
Alana in Uzbekistan and Raditya from Indonesia,
and my dream is to be able to help them
just as well as we can help someone in the United States.
And right now, we're perfecting it there,
where we can easily ship things back and forth,
but we're almost ready.
And with your help, we're going to bring that to your country,
and it's going to change the lives of children at a very low cost point.
As we look further into the future,
our goal is to blend traditional 3D printing,
traditional bionics,
with stem cells from your own body.
And we infuse this plastic, the metallics,
with your own cells, they'll be able to transform how you live.
It will restore the sense of touch,
the sense of temperature, that feel...
the gentle breeze on your arm.
And I hope that will change everything,
and it will become much more normal,
and people will not be defined by a missing part.
And imagine with me, you go to your doctor,
and he tells you,
"Your kidneys are failing. You need to go on the transplant list."
And currently, millions of people all over the world: parents, children,
they wait on transplant lists for a second chance at life.
And sadly, not all of them get that.
And to me, that's just not acceptable.
And with the government's help,
we're going to be able to transform all of this.
So, imagine this: you get this news,
we just make a new one, we replace it.
The doctor tells you your pancreas, it's just not producing enough insulin,
we replace the part.
And it could be that easy, and it's a new way to look at disability;
because disability should not be the defining thing, but our technology can.
We need to engineer hope.
And so, we've looked at this incredible technology, artificial intelligence,
how it's going to change everything, it's going to revolutionize the world,
and I agree, and I hope it does.
And it's up to us how we pursue it,
how we educate our youth, people like me,
and we encourage people to fuse hope and compassion and care
for the next generations, and for our generations,
and the aging populations.
And I'll tell you where this all started.
The boy who contacted us 2 years ago, he was 6 years old.
He dreamed of being Iron Man.
Many of you may be familiar with Robert Downey jr. and Iron Man.
Well, Alex... he wanted a bionic arm just like him.
And we worked with him to make it happen.
And this was the army gave him.
And it's incredible because the same Alex
that was afraid to go to the grocery store, to go to the market,
he's now filled with confidence, and it has reignited his imagination
to dream about how he can use science and technology
to have an impact on his community.
He wants to go to university now,
at age 6, age 7,
transforming his whole trajectory for life,
because we affirmed that his life matters,
and we gave him tools to go and chase those dreams,
and that's what we're going to do.
And with your help, we're going to move forward,
and Limbitless Solutions is going to continue
advancing the next generation of disability technology,
and we're so excited to work with you on this project.
Thank you very much.