Tech innovations that could improve lives in 2015

The annual Nominet Trust 100 highlights global digital social innovation, much of it showcasing technologies that are tackling social challenges in developing countries. But even in the UK and the US, there are plenty of examples that have the potential to mitigate some of our our most intractable social problems, from growing isolation among older people, to the pressure of long-term health conditions on health systems.

The top 100 list was compiled last month, by a group of innovation, internet and charity experts. We’ve picked some of those that could soon be making an impact in the UK, from gadgets that help children and adults to learn to look after their health, to websites that map accessible venues for disabled people, and mobile phone games that harness citizen’s science.

The Nominet Trust was founded in 2008 by Nominet, the organisation that looks after the UK’s system of website addresses, to promote growth in “tech for social good”. Annila Small, the trust’s chief executive says: “Our aim is to make this technology more accessible. We hope the list will encourage other investors so that these amazing digital inventions can get to the people who need them.”

The trust has invested more than £20m of start-up grant funding in more than 630 enterprises in the last five years; only one in 10 make it past the development stage. The fledgling nature of “tech for social good” is demonstrated by the lack of figures for how much the sector is worth, how much it is growing by, or its turnover – something the trust hopes to change in 2015. Small says the latest global list shows a “striking progression in the quality and maturity [of innovation] and is indicative of a wider evolution in the sector”.

The main barrier to technological innovations reaching a wider audience in the UK is often how to integrate them into existing systems such as the NHS. Says Small, “Unfortunately, the failure of large-scale NHS IT projects have made people sceptical of all new technology and commissioners still don’t often get it”. Could 2015 be the tipping point?

Jerry the bear: Interactive toy that teaches children to manage chronic conditions

First came dolls that cried and wet themselves, designed to deter teenagers from young parenthood. Now a cuddly toy bear is helping children in the US newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes learn how to manage their condition. Sensors on Jerry’s paws let children check his blood sugar. His mouth detects different carb levels when he is “fed” with food discs. A blood sugar computer screen on his chest displays the doseage of insulin Jerry needs. And children then practise injecting insulin on his legs, arm and bottom.

After testing 29 prototypes with more than 350 families over three years, Jerry went on sale last year. Some 25% of endocrinoliogist waiting rooms, and 2% of families with newly diagnosed children in the US, have one. Sproutel, the engineer-led company behind Jerry, is in the process of conducting independent research on its impact, but designer Aaron Horowitz, says there has been some incredible initial feedback from families.

“Families have told us that Jerry has helped children learn to count carbs, get over their fears of injections, and ultimately feel more comfortable talking about their disease.” At $300, the bear is beyond the reach of many. But the aim is to release a cheaper version by 2016 that will sell for around $99. “Our goal is to transform Jerry the Bear into a platform to educate and comfort children with a range of chronic conditions,” explains Horowitz. “We are in the early phases of designing new content for children with food allergies.”

Jerry is not the only smart bear on the market. EU-developed Teddy the Guardian, was launched last year. Stuffed full of sensors it aims to help paediatricians assess the health of a child by reading the heart rate, temperature, and stress levels of a child that is hugging the bear.

Liftware: Spoon reduces shaking for people with Parkinson’s disease

Dubbed the “Google spoon”, since Google acquired the company behind it, Lift Lab last year, the Liftware utensil uses accelerometer sensors in its detachable handle to detect hand tremors. These identify the direction and force of a tremor, while actuators move the spoon in the opposite direction to compensate.

It is aimed at people with people with mild to moderate tremors caused by movement disorders such as Parkinson’s, which affects more than 10 million people worldwide. Clinical studies have shown that the spoon can reduce shaking by an average of 70%.

Lift Lab founder, Anupam Pathak, says “If people can’t do something as simple as eating they feel like they lose some independence and dignity. It really affects them.” The soup spoon and smart handle retails for $295. A fork and everyday spoon attachments are $19.95 each. Pathak now works for Google X’s life sciences divison. The next innovation could include a keyholder.

Casserole Club: Online service matches neighbours to prevent loneliness and malnutrition

Social isolation in the UK blights the lives of millions of men and women over 50, and is a frequent cause of early death. The Casserole Club uses technology to rekindle connections between neighbours to share food. It pairs up a neighbour who cooks with an elderly or disabled neighbour who could do with a home-cooked hot meal, rather like an online dating site.

Cooks choose diners they want to share a meal with based on photos, names, and interests they share. Cooks complete an online food hygiene quiz and undergo a vetting (DBS) check before they can visit a diner’s home. Diners who aren’t au fait with uploading profiles onto a website give consent for friends, family, local lunch clubs and care homes to do it for them.

Janet Oran, 92, from Tamworth, says: “I don’t see as many people as I used to, so the visit from Clare Bradford every Wednesday with dinner is great.”

They were matched as part of Staffordshire county council’s Casserole Club. Bradford, who lives around the corner, adds: “Spending a little time with her when I drop off her meal is most enjoyable and I know it makes a big difference to her as well.”

It costs about £30,000 to start a Casserole Club. There are four council-funded clubs in England plus one funded by the housing arm of Barnet council. Two go under than name Meal Makers in Scotland and receive funding from the Food Chain charity. Three state-funded clubs exist in Victoria, Australia. In 2012, 200 plates of food were shared, by the end of 2014, it was 1,300.

“We’ll go where anyone wants the service,” says Ingrid Karikar, product lead at local government innovation venture, FutureGov, which developed the concept. With cuts to meals on wheels leaving 220,000 fewer older people getting the service last year than in 2010, could Casserole Club be the answer?

Smart Glasses: Wearable technology that allows visually impaired people to see

“It’s a miracle”, said a participant in trials for the RNIB charity for the blind and partially sighted and Oxford University Smart Glasses. According to research, 90% of people who are registered blind have some existing light perception. The glasses use 3D cameras to greatly enhance what little they can already see through a computer and this is projected on to lenses. The result is that close-up objects and people go from being dark, indefinable blobs to outlined, cartoonised images – think of pop group A-ha’s 1980s video, Take On Me.

“I used to see faces as dark smudges, but now I can see your eyes, your mouth, your face!” said another trial participant. In an early test, a man said he was able to see his guide dog for the first time.

The glasses began life two years ago as chunky goggles with banks of computer screens. A £500,000 grant from the Google Impact Challenge, which supports charities using technology to aid people, is funding the development of a wearable slimmed-down pair of glasses and software that is usable on a mobile phone. In 2015, 1,000 volunteers will test the new version at home. If all goes to plan, a spin-off company owned by Oxford University and device creator, Stephen Hicks, a research fellow in neuroscience, could be selling them by 2016, priced at £300-£400. The potential to transform lives is huge with 30 million blind people worldwide.

So are they going to put guide dogs out of business? “We expect people will use the glasses in addition to a dog or a cane,” says Hicks. “You’ll be able to navigate objects so we hope it will give people with very limited sight huge confidence to go out the house.”

Reverse the Odds: Smartphone game advances cancer research as you play

Players of this fantastical free app can analyse real cancer data as they play. Since its launch in October, players have become citizen scientists – even people like me who have no idea what cancer tumours look like – and analysed over two million cancer cell images. It’s all about spotting patterns.

At the beginning of each game, or in order to move up a level, players see magnified pictures of real tumours and are asked some simple questions about what they can see, based on shape, colour and brightness. If you get it wrong, you’ll be reassured that there are 24 other players looking at the same pictures so together people are spotting patterns. Apparently we can do this much better than computers, and we are helping Dr Anne Kiltie at Oxford University and professor Gareth Thomas at Southampton University to learn more about the best treatment for certain cancers, although the patients whose tumours we’re examining have already had treatment.

Reverse the Odds is Cancer Research UK’s third citizen science game, following Cell Slider, which analysed 1m cancer images in three months, and Genes in Space, which was accurately analysing six months-worth of data in a single month. Game developers Chunk created Reserve the Odds, with Maverick TV, Cancer Research UK as scientific adviser, and Channel 4 putting up the money.

Dr Samuel Godfrey, science communication manager at Cancer Research UK, says “This gamification of science means that data that would take scientists 18 months to analyse, can be done by thousands of players all over the world in just two weeks. So it’s crucially accelerating our knowledge of cancers and how to treat them.”

There are still 31 million cancer cell images still to go. Get playing.

Euan’s Guide: Review website maps accessibility for disabled people

Despite being in a wheelchair with a ventilator and speech synthesizer due to motor neurone disease, Euan MacDonald, 39, still wants to go to bars, music festivals and sporting events.

But he could only find out if access was suitable through hours of web searching and phone calls. “Quite simply we set up the website because we wanted to learn from other people’s experiences of places with good disabled access and wanted to share ours too, “he says.

Euan’s Guide started life as a local Edinburgh directory on disabled access that he created with his sister, Kiki, two years ago. It now has 1,500 listings in more than 350 towns across the UK with reviews and venue information sent in everyday from disabled people and their friends.

Thousands now use the site both to review and to search for places. It is compatible with eye-tracking software, voice navigation and screen readers. A Near Me functionality and app created last year allows people to use the guide when they are out and about.

Euan’s Guide is supported by BT after it won its People Choice Award in August for innovations that use ICT to address social challenges. It plans to become a charity in 2015 and to make the website even more inclusive. Importantly, the reviews are also encouraging venues to improve access.

MacDonald says: “One of the most common complaints about accessible loos is that they’re often used as a cleaning cupboard with hoovers, buckets etc – with a little education and staff training that’s very easy to fix.”

Ostomi-i Alert: Bluetooth technology helps patients cope with ostomy bags

With health systems buckling under the strain of an ageing population, the self-management of long-term conditions is increasingly vital. Five million people worldwide cope with having a stoma: the artificial opening that takes faeces or urine out of the body from the intestine into a prosthetic pouch, or bag, - often known as a colostomy bag - that collects waste from the colon or bladder.

A patient, Michael Seres, 44, has developed an ingenious bluetooth device that monitors all forms of prosthetic pouches, or ostomy bags, to avoid leakages and measure outputs after he experienced the indignities of life following a pioneering bowel transplant for Crohn’s disease, which he was diagnosed with aged 12.

While recovering in hospital, he devised the Ostom-i using a small element in a Nintendo Wii handset that could accurately meaure pouch fullness by sensing the arc in the bag’s external curvature. This alert clips onto a bag and sweeps over it every few seconds sending measurements to a free app on a smartphone. It alerts patients when their bag needs changing and supplies data to clinicians without the patient having to measure their waste by hand.

Having developed a handmade prototype in six months, Seres set up 11Health and Technologies Ltd with business partner, Adam Bloom, who invested in a fully built product. Ostomi-i Alert sells for £49.99 for three months, or just over 50p a day, (a price based on market research via social media) but Seres’s goal for 2015 is to make the device available on prescription by proving its cost-saving to the NHS when compared to existing products.

“My absolute goal is to make the device available to all via prescription,” he says. “We believe that we have now proved that case and are waiting on a final decision.”

Outside the UK, 10 leading US hospitals are conducting user testing.