These Middle School Girls Had An Idea That Could Help Alzheimer’s Patients Remember Loved Ones

After 12-year-old Annie Gainer schooled her grandfather had grown Alzheimer’s, it took usually a year for an generally changed partial of his memory to trip divided — one that left him incompetent to remember her name.

“We done him a scrapbook. He has 36 grandkids yet he can usually remember his children’s names,” Annie told The Huffington Post. “He can’t associate that me and my brothers are my mother’s kids.”

Determined to assistance others vital with Alzheimer’s, Annie and 6 of classmates during St. Catherine of Alexandria in a Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn put their heads together to detect a facial approval judgment smartphone app for a annual Verizon Innovative App Challenge

“We didn’t do it for a income or a prize,” Annie said. “We only wish to get it combined to assistance Alzheimer’s patients.”

Dubbed “Remember Me,” a app would use facial approval record and a smartphone camera to assistance Alzheimer’s patients commend family, friends, caregivers and even pets — arrange of like a scrapbook. A singular snap of a camera would lift adult information like a subject’s name, age, attribute to a studious — and even prior photos of a studious and theme together.

Though a app fell brief of a inhabitant esteem when a plea wrapped Tuesday, “Remember Me” picked adult “Best In State” and “Best In Region” accolades. The organisation also picked adult a $5,000 money esteem for their school.

Annie pronounced even yet their app won’t be taken adult by Verizon, she hopes they can find someone to take their demo and move a app a life.

“This organisation of girls is amazing,” scholarship clergyman Carolyn Anderson, one of a team’s expertise advisors, told HuffPost. “They’ve never once asked what they were going to get out of it. They only wanted to assistance others. And they unequivocally wanted to see it used to assistance Alzheimer’s patients.”

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It all started when a primogenitor who used to work for Verizon brought adult a foe during a propagandize house meeting.

“This is a initial time doing [the challenge] — we had no suspicion what we were doing,” Anderson said. “We threw it out to all a students in 6 by eighth grade.”

The competition, now in a third year, is directed during boosting center and high propagandize students’ seductiveness in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects. Under a discipline of a challenge, any app judgment had to align with education, medical or sustainability.

Annie pronounced she and her teammates all have dungeon phones — mostly used for “social media and games” — yet as a outcome of a app challenge, a girls have all taken a penetrating seductiveness in medical and mobile technology.

“I never unequivocally suspicion about carrying a pursuit like this before, yet after doing this [challenge], we consider this would be a unequivocally fun job,” she said.

Anderson is anxious about what a destiny holds.

“I’m so vehement to have a organisation of girls vehement about scholarship and tech,” pronounced Anderson, who will learn a students when they strech seventh class this fall. “There’s always this tarnish about girls fondness scholarship and a suspicion that girls should surpass during reading. They didn’t caring about that — they all wish to have careers in scholarship and medicine.”

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/05/verizon-alzheimers-app_n_6617290.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago&ir=Chicago