This is Emerson.
He’s like any other two-year-old. Energetic, playful and curious.
Except there's something that makes him different.
In August 2016, Emerson was diagnosed with a cyst on his spine, Level C6-C7, which is quite high up.
Which basically meant that Emerson, after surgery, he became paralyzed from the chest down.
Emerson’s spinal cord injury turned his family’s life upside down.
It's hard because as a parent you want to grieve that my child is no longer walking.
He had a really active life before.
Earlier this year Emerson had a seizure in the middle of the night.
When his parents came into his bedroom the room was a normal temperature but Emerson was freezing cold.
Emerson’s parents now wake up every three hours
to check their son's temperature and to rotate his sleeping position, something he can’t do himself.
If we had an app that actually said his temperature has dropped,
so we need to then come into his room, check that everything is okay.
The app could give you peace of mind in the middle of the night?
Yeah definitely, and then it would allow us to have a couple of hours of sleep.
So we’re going to go into a hackathon, this is hosted by IBM, here in the U.K.
Basically it’s a bunch of people competing to see who can build the best app to help Emerson and his family.
How’s it going?
We’re working on an app to help monitor Emerson.
We want a solution that will grow with him as he grows older.
What we’ve put together is a dashboard that would be
mounted on Emerson’s wheelchair in the form of an iPad.
The winning team’s design would provide real-time updates
on Emerson’s temperature, sweat levels and heart rate.
The app would send out alerts to Emerson’s family or teachers if something is wrong.
The idea is that the data is in such a digestible, easy-to-use form that if there is something going wrong,
then anybody around Emerson can quickly see that and then knows exactly what to do.
IBM is among a growing number of big tech companies investing in digital health.
Research shows apps are the fastest-growing sector in the digital health market.
And the U.K. mobile health app market is expected to reach £250 million, or more than $300 million next year,
a growth rate of 35% since 2014.
We say we’re a bit more than an app, we’re more like a digital service.
Chris Edson is the CEO of OurPath, a digital health startup in London that helps prevent diabetes.
We started the program mainly for diabetes prevention, so helping people get out of the risk zone.
But then we soon realized that even people with diabetes
can really benefit from that lifestyle change program.
For about $250, OurPath users receive a fitness tracker, a smart scale and an app
to monitor their eating, sleeping and activity habits.
They receive personalized advice from the company’s dieticians and take part in an online community.
Users in the three-month program have seen sustained weight loss
of around 18 pounds, reducing their risk of diabetes by 70%.
The company just partnered with the U.K.’s National Health Service,
where it will take on an additional 1,000 patients, more than twice its current user base.
Do the people who use it come back to you and say
this has given me that higher quality of life that I was looking for?
The feedback from people on the program is the most amazing thing.
Hearing people email us and say, "This has changed my life."
The app from the hackathon is being developed and Emerson’s family
says they hope to have it when Emerson goes to nursery next year.
Emerson has complex needs but they’re needs that shouldn’t stop him
from being a normal two-year-old or a normal child.
Emerson every day brings joy into our hearts. He smiles, he’s got a cheeky character.
He stays so positive. He gets us through our days.