The future looks bright for a team of Nigerian-Irish girls who just won the global Technovation Girls competition with their design of ‘Memory Haven’ — an app that helps dementia patients and their caregivers.
It will be in the app stores soon and helps with memory loss, difficulty with recognition, speech, and remembering to take medication.
Bill Whittle, whose own mother suffers dementia, celebrates a future we all dreamed of when we were kids, and analyzes the value of big-prize competitions to nudge innovation.
Background Resource:
Nigerian Irish Teen Girls Win Prize for Dementia App
[Nadia Whitehead, NPR, October 8, 2020]
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Bill Whittle Network ยท Bright Future: Nigerian-Irish Girls Design App to Help Dementia Patients, Win Global Competition
10 replies on “Bright Future: Nigerian-Irish Girls Design App to Help Dementia Patients, Win Global Competition”
My aunt had some form of dementia (I don’t know if it was ever fully diagnosed) but she didn’t recognize her husband who came to see her every day or the kids and grand kids that stopped in once a week. Had no problem recognizing my dad or her other brothers that came in from out of state once a year or so, at least for a couple days. After seeing them every day for a bit, she kinda… lost track of who they were.
I think competitions and prizes are great and like the fundraising and scholarships that Mike Rowe does for the trades. While I don’t watch them, shows like America/Britain’s Got Talent, American Idol and such are great in a similar way. Since “best” is subjective for most of those contests, just placing in the top ten to 20 means you’ve had national exposure and someone that thinks your show/act/talent would do very well in a smaller or niche market can still make you a star. For school age kids, events that let them exercise their entrepreneurial muscles are great and get them thinking in the “see a problem solve a problem” way, hopefully strong enough before college grinds it back down.
Some years ago I was in a Christian vocal ensemble that was the occasional worship leader at services at nursing homes and hospitals. The hospital was done over a closed circuit tv the others were done in person. Once we sang at a Alzheimer’s care center. There, we sang Fifties and Fourties songs. We started with our pianist playing, watching the people light up. About 2 songs in, one lady got up and asked if she could play, so we let her. She was very good. We sang various songs with her playing and often singing along for over an hour. Later some of the staff came over and told us she used to do that for a living. They also said normally she was almost vegatative. She was quite lively during and after. I wish I could do something like that again. Also, my father had a stroke in his eighties and had mild dementia. He forgot who I was once and often made no sense. Not Alzheimer’s, but run of the mill dementia due to the stroke.
This is a wonderful episode.
There is a word in the writeup that doesn’t belong, and I don’t think it’s a quibble. The word is “nudge.”
I hate that word. Or, rather, I find the actions it implies extremely annoying. Look at some examples from a dictionary site:
-If you nudge someone, you push them gently, usually with your elbow, in order to draw their attention to something.
I nudged Stan and pointed again.
‘Stop it,’ he said
Synonyms: push, touch, dig, jog
-If you nudge someone or something into a place or position, you gently push them there.
The civil servant nudged him forward.
-To annoy with persistent complaints, criticisms, or pleas; nag
He was always nudging his son to move to a better neighborhood
It’s something you do *to* people. Yes, usually with good intentions, but it’s not always interpreted that way. That negative connotation even shows up in the examples. “Stop it.” Civil servants do it – isn’t that revealing?; Fathers do it to sons, which implies a certain right (entitlement? perogative?) to intrude, which the son finds annoying.
What makes that word even more annoying is that leftists glommed on to it some years ago. Wasn’t it some high-level Obama guy who wanted to nudge us all into some stupid program or other?
That word doesn’t fit. How about: Encourage? Inspire? Persuade? Positive words designed to pull (psychologically), not push (physically). Besides, if there is a competition with a reward all one needs is to advertise and they will come.
End of rant. It’s off on a tangent, I know.
You may be thinking of Cass Sunstein and the book he coauthored called: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness; by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein. The Amazon link is:
https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=cass+sunstein&qid=1602517858&s=books&sr=1-6
Looks like he is an even more prolific author than I had previously known.
Since Sunstein is a well known liberal law prof, proceed with caution :-). The Amazon blurb sounds innocuous enough, but …. you are correct to point out the annoying aspect of nudging as well as the more positive guidance or “push someone into action” elements involved in that term/ usage/ practice.
That’s the guy.
It’s insidious. If I’m not careful I may come across as pushy, myself, instead of encouraging, even as I mean well.
Gotta love those girls. Especially the Nigerian-Irish aspect! Bet there’s an interesting story, there…
There are no tangents on BWdotCom.
Yes! BW himself has led the way w/ tangents… we merely follow in his footsteps!
Music and smells are the fast track to memory as they connect emotionally.. Song you haven’t heard in ages…and you instantly are transported to that time when you were dancing like you just didn’t care…with someone you cared about. And, you remember most all the words. Or the smell of a specific perfume/aftershave or green grass or bacon or the smell of a loved one’s garment they wore. Extremely powerful.
To this day, a very particular smell of truck exhaust makes me think of ice cream because that was the smell of the ice cream truck that went through my neighborhood when I was a kid.
Scott, thank you so much for sharing this message of hope and joy. It is so refreshing to hear about young people doing such positive, uplifting things. And Bill, I am praying for you and your mom going through this devastating experience. I know it must break your heart and I ask for God to comfort you and give you patience for this trial.