Bromfield InventTeam displays the Apod. Top row (left to right): Jesse Wolff, Sam Peisch, Connor MacKenzie, Mac Devlin, Greg Wenger. Bottom row: Adam Katcher, Jon Fricchione. (Photo by Alice Rennie)

Memory not what it used to be? A group of Bromfield teens has been hard at work to make life easier for the more forgetful among us. Seven Bromfield students used a $10,000 grant to develop a hand-held device, dubbed an Apod, to help remind Alzheimer’s or other memory-impaired patients to take their medicine, or to warn them that, for example, their front door is open or their stove isn’t turned off.

Harvard’s team is one of 20 such high school teams from across the country awarded a grant last fall by the Lemelson-M.I.T. InvenTeam program, which aims to encourage students’ interest in science, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Started five years ago, it’s “an initiative designed to excite high school students about the rewarding process of identifying a problem or need, brainstorming solutions, and working hands-on to develop an invention prototype,” according to its website, www.inventeams.org. One hundred teams applied for the grants in the spring of 2006, with 20 chosen to receive money last fall to further refine their ideas and build a working prototype of their inventions.

The hard work of these students culminated in a recent three-day stay at M.I.T., where they were given tours of the campus, fed lavishly, and generally had a great time networking with other student teams and with working scientists. At M.I.T., each team gave a formal 15-minute presentation of its work and manned a booth showcasing its product at several open houses at the Stata student center. It was at an open house June 21 that I caught up with Harvard’s seven budding inventors: Mac Devlin, who is entering 10th grade; future juniors Greg Wenger, Sam Peisch, and Connor MacKenzie; and future seniors Jon Fricchione, Jesse Wolff, and Adam Katcher.

The Bromfield students were eager to demonstrate their product, and even had a sample door set up beside their table, along with a sample pill cassette, to show the Apod in action. (The name is a play on iPod, with an A for Alzheimer’s.) The system has a central, hand-held unit, the size of a Palm Pilot or small transistor radio. The central device can communicate with several remote sensors, which can be put in a pillbox, or on a door, stove, or wherever it is needed.

If it’s time for the patient to take his or her medicine, the Apod can sense whether the pillbox has been opened or not. The unit will beep and flash the message, “TAKE YOUR PILLS” if the pillbox hasn’t been opened and it’s past time for taking the medicine. Once the patient does access the pills, the message is replaced with a smiley face “for positive reinforcement,” Connor MacKenzie, the group’s media coordinator, explained. (If that sounds like a fancy title for a kid who just finished 10th grade, it was quite apt, since he had earlier been interviewed by WBZ-TV and by WBUR radio, and was quite expert at it.)

The patient’s caregiver can decide where the remote sensors should go, and can program the Apod to sound a warning if pills aren’t taken, a door has been left ajar, a bathtub is about to overflow, or an appliance such as a stove has been left on accidentally. If the patient doesn’t heed the unit’s warning after a period of time, the device can then alert a caretaker, as well, MacKenzie noted. “It shifts the memory burden to the device, and makes the person and the caregiver more independent.” He demonstrated how the central unit could be worn, clipped to a belt, saying “the system is fairly unobtrusive.” The central unit would likely cost about $100–200, with each sensor costing about $50, the students estimate.

Bromfield’s team didn’t need to spend all of its grant; MacKenzie estimated it spent about $7,000 to make its prototype. The funds went to buy such items as the remote sensors; several Palm Pilots, which were re-programmed to serve as the central units; and a full-size door for demonstrating the device.

When asked how they transformed the Palm Pilots into Apods, the group trotted out Mac Devlin, who appeared to be the software guru of the team. He explained that he had hooked up the Palm Pilots to his laptop with a cable and then re-programmed them, “using H Basic ++,” he said. The units will use Bluetooth technology to communicate wirelessly with the sensors. Devlin noted that the units have about 100 megabytes free, even after being programmed for several functions, so they could be further customized.

As MacKenzie listed possible future features, such as an alert telling a patient the garbage needs to be emptied, I realized these kids might have a bigger market than they realize, since some parents of teenagers could probably think up a few uses for the Apod, too. I pictured parents not just remotely keeping track of teens doing chores such as trash removal, but also getting Apod warning signals from smart sensors on their liquor cabinet doors and such.

The team plans to keep working now that the showcase is over. They want to develop more sensors, patent the device, and talk to companies about partnering with them in bringing it to market. When I noted that a lot of Alzheimer’s patients might not be all that comfortable using this sort of technology, MacKenzie replied that this should not be as much of an issue in the future: “It’s estimated 16 million people in the U.S. will have Alzheimer’s by 2050, and by then people will be used to using tech stuff.”

The seven students came together just over a year ago when Bromfield science teachers Deborah Pierce and Gary Menin heard about the grant program and asked for student volunteers who were interested in being on a team. The group kicked around several ideas for inventions, but several of the students had family members with Alzheimer’s, and they settled on the Apod. When the students came back to school last fall, there was a glitch, however. Because the teachers instituted a work-to-rule policy to protest the unsettled teachers’ union contract, the kids had to find new advisors. Parents Barbara Petroulis, Debbbie MacKenzie, Gary Wenger, and his friend Mike Mintz stepped up to assist the team.

After their proposal won them the grant, the students put in an enormous amount of work on the project. They met for three hours twice a week in the winter and spring, with more hours worked on weekends when various sub-groups, such as the hardware, software, marketing, and testing teams, met separately. When I asked Petroulis if the team’s efforts had gone smoothly, she laughed and admitted that there was a big last-minute crunch to get the Apod working the way it should. “They worked all the way through exam week,” she said.

Wenger noted that Bromfield’s team was one of the smaller ones, with most teams having 10 to 12 students, but ranging up to 30. The other teams also had teacher advisors, and many had corporate sponsors. For example, the Acton-Boxborough team had three advisors provided by Cisco for its project to develop a grenade that releases a flame-suppressing gas to put out fires.

Getting to meet so many students from other places, who are all interested in engineering and inventions, was clearly one of the benefits for the students convening at M.I.T. “It’s nice for the kids to experience,” Deb MacKenzie said. “You’d get goose bumps hearing stories from other kids about how their lives have been changed” by coming to the InvenTeams showcase.