Catch me if you can: A new device aims to catch wandering Alzheimer's patients and bring relief to caregivers

Kenneth Shinozuka invents a device that alerts caregivers of Alzheimer's patient's wandering.

Approximately five million people in the United States suffer from Alzheimer's. 65 percent of those patients wander. They get up in the middle of the night and take off. Many times these patients get lost or injured.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Kenneth Shinozuka, 15-years-old, lives with and helps care for his grandfather, who is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.

In August of 2005, Shinozuka's grandfather showed up at his front door in pajamas, with a police officer.

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While the family was sleeping, his grandfather was wandering aimlessly on a freeway two miles from their home.

"Subsequently, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and the dynamic of my three-generation family changed forever," explained Shinozuka in the proposal of his 2014 Google science fair experiment.

Shinozuka and his family, like many families with an Alzheimer patient, needed a way to catch the wandering before anything terrible happened.

"I grew increasingly concerned about my aunt, Grandfather's primary caregiver, because she had to wake up frequently every night to check on him," he said. "Despite her efforts, she was seldom able to catch his wandering, and thus he suffered many accidents."

Nothing out in the market today helped Shinozuka's family.

Shinozuka invented the Smart Bathroom that sends an alert to the wristwatch of children when their elderly parent falls down in the bathroom at age six.

At age seven, he came up with a Smart Medicine Box that alerts a patient with a sound and flashing light when it's time to take medication.

Master inventor, Shinozuka took it upon himself to create the perfect device for his grandfather.

"The lack of an effective solution motivated me to invent a wearable device to detect patients' wanderings out of bed and alert their caregivers."

Shinozuka invented a low-cost wearable sensor technology that detects a patient's wandering in real-time and alerts the caregiver immediately.

"Once the patient steps onto the floor, a sensor worn on the foot will immediately detect the pressure caused by body weight and wirelessly trigger an audible alert in a caregiver's Smartphone," he explains in the summary of his experiment. "I developed three enabling technologies: an ultra-thin film sensor that is comfortable to wear, a coin-sized wireless circuit enabled by cutting-edge Bluetooth Low Energy, and apps that transform Smartphones into caregivers' monitors."

After a six month trial on his grandfather, his system detected 100 percent of his grandfather's wandering cases and issued alerts within seconds of his stepping out of bed with no false alarms.

Although not available on the market, Shinozuka's invention was entered in the 2014 Google Science Fair won The Scientific American Science in Action Award.

He continues testing his device in nursing homes.

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