While many college students are taking big trips or going out with friends, Tyler Skluzacek of Saint Paul, Minnesota, used his time to create a smart watch app to help veterans who suffer from night terrors. Skluzacek, a senior at Macalester College, entered a computer coding contest with his team and ended up creating an app that helps veterans with PTSD get a better night's sleep.
Skluzacek got the idea for the technology when he saw how his father, an Army veteran, was struggling upon his return from service. The college student told People that his father would wake up with night terrors, and he wanted to find a way to help him sleep peacefully.
Skluzacek and his team came up with myBivy, an biometrics monitoring systems that tracks veterans' while they sleep.
"After a couple weeks of tracking the soldier we can find the exact symptoms of the onset of the panic attack and try to use the watch or use the Android phone to disrupt that or take them out of the deep sleep but keep them asleep," Skluzacek told USA Today.
According to People magazine, myBivy uses sound and vibration to partially wake the veterans when it senses an oncoming night terror. The news source reported that the app would be entered into clinical trials next Spring.