One of the many struggles that comes with PTSD is sleeping. Veterans who have PTSD will commonly have night terrors that constantly wake them up, creating stress and anxiety. Thankfully, a team of college students is trying to use technology to change that.
This team is led by Tyler Skluzacek, a student at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Inspired by Tyler’s father, a veteran with PTSD, the team created myBivy. This smartphone app uses a motion detecting watch that syncs up with the user’s phone and tries to detect and prevent night terrors from happening.
Here’s how it all works:
There are certain physical signs the body gives before and during a night terror. The watch is designed to learn what these signs are and send that date to the phone. Once these signs are learned the watch can ring and vibrate to wake the user, if any of the signs are detected.
The best part is that the watch doesn’t fully wake the user. It only pulls them out of the deep sleep stage, where night terrors happen, and puts them in a more shallow stage of sleep. This stops the night terror before it happens and lets the user sleep through the night.
Tyler and his team created the app at a coding competition called HackDC. MyBivy took first place and from there the team started a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign hit the fundraising goal and now the team is working to improve the app and launch it in the App Store and Google Play.
This is a great example of people rolling up their sleeves and helping veterans. The team at Jan Dils Attorneys at Law has been rolling up their sleeves for many years and is ready to help you with your VA disability benefits claim.
