A three-year-old Lanarkshire girl, who has cerebral palsy, has inspired her big sister to invent an award-winning device that could help children like her to walk.
Now, the award-winning Cloud Walker design – the brainchild of 11-year-old Olivia Thompson and three of her classmates – could soon be brought to life, thanks to a team of budding engineers at the City of Glasgow College.
Gabriella Thompson, who was born two months prematurely on April 17 2020, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy soon after her first birthday.
Gabriella’s cerebral palsy (CP) – a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture – impacts her lower limbs, meaning that she cannot walk unaided.
She uses a walking frame to get around. But as her mum Aileen explained, even that is hard work for Gabriella, who receives regular physiotherapy.
So, when the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) threw down the gauntlet to Scotland’s primary school pupils for the first time in its #DigiInventors Challenge, Olivia and three of her friends called on some blue sky thinking to create the Cloud Walker invention.
Described as an ‘upgraded walker for children with cerebral palsy,’ the device, which is still at design stage, includes an iPad with apps to help youngsters ‘learn, walk, and exercise all at once.’
Under the tagline, ‘reach for the clouds’, the gadget’s apps would provide stretching exercises, memory games, drawing activities and more. Some work only when the child moves the walker.
Olivia, who is a P7 pupil at St Bride’s Primary in Bothwell, teamed up with classmates Evie Anderson, Nuala Maria McKnight, and Ellie Lappin to produce the design.
The friends created a video presentation for their invention which was entered into the DHI #DigiInventors Challenge earlier this year. Entrants were invited to present ideas inspired by health care challenges that could be transformed into a digital health and care solution.
Judges crowned The Cloud Walker the 2023 winner – and City of Glasgow College engineering students may now make it into a working prototype.
The young inventors have also appealed for a designer and marketing company to get plans for The Cloud Walker off the ground – and Olivia is determined to take matters into her own hands.
“If it doesn’t get invented, I will try to make it happen when I’m older,” said Olivia, whose sister attends Tree House Nursery in Uddingston.
“It’s important to help children with cerebral palsy, like my sister.”
Nobody is more delighted than Olivia’s parents, Aileen, 39 and Steven, 40 – dentists who also have an eight-year-old son, Philip.
“I am extremely proud of Olivia and her friends,” Aileen said.
“She and her three friends at school did it all themselves. She told me they had come up with this idea based on a walker, and I thought that was really nice. She told me bits and pieces, but it wasn’t something we or the other parents knew much about. It was all their own work. They filmed a presentation and their teacher sent it away.”
Aileen, Stephen and Olivia’s classmates’ parents didn’t have sight of the winning presentation, slide show and sales pitch until the recent awards ceremony at the City of Glasgow College.
Aileen added: “At first, I thought it was a South Lanarkshire initiative or something just within the school, bit it is the whole of Scotland. For them to win a national competition is amazing.”
Now that she knows more about the girls’ prototype, Aileen believes The Cloud Walker could make a real difference to children like Gabriella who have cerebral palsy – and so too does a health professional.
“An NHS physiotherapist looked at the video and said: ‘This is something the NHS would love. It ticks so many of the boxes within health care,’” said Aileen, who says Olivia and Philip dote on their little sister.
“They are really close. Gabriella is like a mini version of her big sister. They look the same and have the same kind of personality.”
Added Olivia: “I am amazed that we won. When our headteacher announced it, I’d never seen my friends so happy. We worked on it for weeks. I can’t believe we were chosen.
“Gabriella loves to dance, but she struggles to walk. She sort of bunny-hops to move about. If nobody tries to help children with cerebral palsy they won’t be able to get around places in life. I feel proud that we had the chance to create something that could help make walking and physio sessions more fun and interactive.”
Congratulating the winners, St Bride’s Primary depute head teacher Rachel O’Hara said: “We are extremely proud of the team who worked really hard to develop an idea for an innovative health app to support children with cerebral palsy. The video presentation was very passionate, and it was clear how much they had been inspired by a younger sister of someone in the team.”
Nearly 70 applications were submitted from a number of primary schools from across Scotland for the first #DigiInventors Challenge, and judges praised the standard of entries across the board.
DHI is a national resource, funded by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council, and has its head office within the Glasgow City Innovation District.
It is a world-leading collaboration between The Glasgow School of Art and The University of Strathclyde, with a focus on innovating in digital health and care to help the people of Scotland live longer, healthier lives while providing sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Their mission is to transform great ideas into real solutions.
Its chief executive, George Crooks OBE, said: “The DigiInventors challenge has proven a real catalyst to unlock the potential of our younger pupils to create digital supported solutions to real life problems and hopefully create a long-lasting interest in digital health and care as a possible future career.
“We were presented with many good examples of real digital innovation. Congratulations to all participants this year and in particular to our worthy winners.”
A talented team from King’s Park Primary School were crowned winners in the P5/6 category of the young inventors’ competition.
Named ‘Our App,’ the device was designed by Jack Fellows, Emilie Boyle McIntyre, Kayla Wishart and Jay Young.
A second P7 team from St Bride’s Primary were named runners-up for their Refreshing Minds invention.
Kara Dunn, Kyla Fallon, Ethan Linton and Austin Walker were praised for their app that helps children with their mental health and worries. Refreshing Minds, which promotes wellbeing, will help them deal with stress through relaxing puzzles and tasks.
Roy Gardner, vice principal of corporate development and innovation at City of Glasgow College, said: “Huge congratulations to all the finalists and winners of the first #DigiInventors Challenge primary school edition.
"This competition not only showcases the huge level of innovation and creativity within our young people, but it also reinforces City of Glasgow College’s commitment to let learning flourish.
“We were delighted to host this special celebration and would like to thank our partners at the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre for providing the opportunity to collaborate on this great initiative.
"The possibility of this year’s winning entry being developed by our students is an exciting prospect, and we look forward to supporting the next steps, as well as more innovation through many more DigiInventors challenges to come.”
For more information visit www.dhi-scotland.com
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