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TEDx Talks
Title: Using the "Internet of Things" to Care for a Child with Disabilities | Nick Dibble | TEDxZumbroRiver
Published: 2017-08-11
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoNJ9boslA
I want to share with you an important and life changing promise I made to my son am going to show you hi I'm using some exciting low cost emerging technology that anyone can use you can go to the store and buy it right now called the internet things and how I'm using that technology to keep that promise to my son before we we do that I
want to give you a little information about myself in fact it's kind of a a little bit of an uncomfortable truth in it unless you knew me you wouldn't necessarily know that about me and it was something I dreaded share as I went on a first date about five years ago and I'm and I'm going on this date and I'm meeting this this this amazing looking
nurse and she's about ten years younger than I am and %HESITATION and we sit down at the restaurant and we're going through all of the normal did pleasantries as you go through on a first date you know I'm lying about how much our goats she's lying about how much she likes dating short guys you know it's going it's going really well and I say okay now
now's the time now is now's the time I need to drop this bomb it's going really well and I said I I need to let you know that I drive a minivan and the reason I was driving a minivan that night's well because I only had one vehicle in that vehicle needed fit my son's wheelchair you see I was going on a date that night as
a single dad raising my three year old son complex special needs a plea on my own so let me introduce you to Adrian this is Adrian now Adrian is eight years old in this picture %HESITATION but %HESITATION I or six or seven but I no one knows and Adrian is a great great kid he loves football and he loves sports and he loves all these normal
things the typical kids love but a journal is born at twenty eight weeks he was born two pounds nine ounces he was an identical twin this brother blaze passed away the day after Christmas in two thousand eight Adrian has global developmental delays cerebral palsy Adrian is unable to walk talk and he will require complete total care for the rest of his life so as I was
a single dad raising Adrian we had a lot of adventures together and some weeks were good some weeks were bad hard but every night I would rack Adrian asleep in a rocking chair I would tell him what we would do the next day how much I loved him and how I promised him I would always take care of him as long as I could now that
was five years ago a lot can happen in five years for for example I I went on that date and you can imagine how well the date went we yeah we got married and that's my way three there that's my three year old Charlie and there's Adrian and %HESITATION and you know what's really exciting is that where it actually expecting a baby in three weeks what's
even funnier is that we moved out of our house today yeah and and we moved into our new house tomorrow and as my wife reminded me this was an excellent excellent time to prepare for a Ted talk yeah yeah but we talked about Adrian for a little bit but let's talk about Charlie now where's Charlie when he was a little baby %HESITATION he's three now and
%HESITATION and Charlie is an awesome awesome kid he is analytical and he is intelligent and he challenges us we worry we worry about Charlie yet we worry about all of that the typical things that parents worry about we worry about where he'll go to school what kind of friends he'll have a where who go to Cali age what we'll do with his room when he moves
out you know all those things but for Adrian when we talk about his future it's a little bit different and I want to show you an interesting slide here in that this is why I'm calling act here intensity and a soul as we know when all children are born and they start off with a high degree of care intensity but as we learn new skills and
we learn to become more independent searches changing their clothes and you know I don't need to be changed anymore and all these things that level of care intensity starts go down over time but for Adrian that level of care starts high and continues to go higher as he gets older now the good news is though that we live in a society where we care about kids
families like mine and kids like Adrian I'm pretty sure we still do and there are amazing organizations out there whose sole mission is the support my family and improve the quality of life kids like Adrian the problem is that they're in crisis to and my family has been on a waiting list for two years for in home health port Seoul as an engineer I had to
rethink and re engineer how we think about providing that level of care and we can do this was something called the internet of things the internet of things it's basically very simply almost anything that became can be turned on or off can be connected to the internet troll from your smart cellphone frightening but also exhilarating at the same time in these are all kinds of different
things these are %HESITATION wireless outlets in temperature sensors and cameras invoice assistance like via Amazon eye doctor apple or Google home there's even a wireless network connected light bulbs so what I want to do if I want to take you on a short little journey if you will with me I'm AI typical nighttime sleeping morning time routine in our home and I think that %HESITATION you
will be able to relate to a few things a few other things I'm gonna highlights some interesting challenges that might be new to you and I have so let's start Mr with the dreaded bedtime routine right so bed time in our house I runs between thirty minutes in eight hours I kinda depends depends on when we start any Jersey laid up our three year old turns
into sort of this dehydrated philosopher it's very very thirsty yeah and some of life's deepest deepest questions but for Adrian that conversation it's it's a little bit different so what we worry about when we put him to bed is a really basic but really hard question to answer is he too hot %HESITATION Z. too cold now think about it for a second when I put him
to bed every night and I put the covers on him he can't take those covers off you can't tell me he's too hot he can't get up out of bed so it's something I I A. denies over you know how do we know he's too hot or cold when he sleeps so what we do if we take this really interesting %HESITATION little sensor here and the
sensor is made to read the temperature in your home and it connects your smartphone really really easily it's just %HESITATION press of a button and it and it connects us in there and it tells you the temperature easy enough but what I do if I put it major means bad so at night I contracted anytime and I can see these two hot or is too cold
in addition it can alert my phone it vibrates if he's too hot we can also take it one step further and use a wireless outlet like this it says too cold turn on the space heater and what is that just the right temperature turn it off again so what's really cool about this this is a thirty dollar sensor and we just answered a really basic but
difficult question thirty dollars now let's talk about all the kids are in bed in their sleeping and I %HESITATION as everyone knows all children always sleep through the night for some reason we put Charlie in bed and then %HESITATION we wake up in the morning and he's in bed with us and we're not really sure how that happens it's amazing but I for Adrian again really
basic question how do we know that he slept okay I mean how do we know that because Adrian doesn't understand the concept of time he could wake up at eleven PM and thinks it's a new day he could be up for the next twenty four hours so we need to know if he's sleeping okay and we can do that by using this %HESITATION interesting device here
I this is a wireless network camera connexin tear your wifi %HESITATION and home again a simple lap you're installing your phone and this camera it die has infrared capabilities can see at night %HESITATION can also be controlled so it can move three hundred sixty degrees echo also record so what we do if we put this in his room put it up there and watches him while
he sleeps and it also do taxes there's movement so if there's movement I can let us know in addition it also takes recordings so that we can check the next day to see if the sleeping okay or what kind of night he had or even if there's any seizure activity now this camera sixty dollars so we just added the ability to see if he's sleeping okay
and possibly see if their seizures happening at night for sixty dollars but so the kids were asleep they wake up in the morning and all kids are always happy when ever they wake up in the interest of full disclosure if you don't have kids that is a complete falsehood that is not true but for Charlie if he's upset my morning we can give him options we
can ask him what kind of cereal he wants if he wants to color if he wants to do things that were basically sort of ease that that transition as he starts his day but again for Adrian it's a little bit different because what Adrian gets upset he doesn't always know how to calm himself down so it's really important there we create a sensory room familiar relaxing
something that he really really enjoys so before I get Adrian up out of bed everyday I press a button on my on my cell phone and it does a number of things and what it does is it tells us network connected by palm turn on and set at a certain level in addition it also tells this Amazon echo here to play sound and his favorite music
it also turns out his cartoons so as we bring him out into the world every day he created tool warm relaxing friendly environment and really starts his day off right but we're not gonna stop there we're gonna keep going I want to show you something really interesting now this is I as something that Adrian is working on right now and I he just started on it
and this is called a Toby dynamax and this device operates only through I gaze meaning that it operates only off of where you look on the screen and it's really cool because it can tell all of these things what to do I turn on my balls can adjust the temperature you can talk integrates with Facebook and all those things so it's really really exciting is really
really exciting now it's estimated by the year twenty twenty there will be over one billion internet of things devices connected to the internet as long as these things remain affordable easy to use and accessible the way we think about how we provide care to our kids in our family and friends with disabilities it's really really bright it's really bright so I wanna leave you two points
tonight there are three point nine million children born in the United States each year all those a few thousand we'll share a story just like Adrian's imagine if we funded agencies and we let them fulfill their missions and we we convey enabled families and we passed along this knowledge and innovation in the training we continue to innovate together think about the possibility I mean it's right
in front of us it's right there let's be a let's be brutally honest for a second alright this is a free open venue of ideas let's be honest Adrian will never go to college he'll never be married he'll ever have a job and it will always cost society more to provide to him but he will never ever be able to give back so why should you
