UIC Division of Specialized Care for Children gives family a safer night’s sleep

For Melissa and Tim Kearney, their commitment to their daughter Makaelyn’s safety continues around the clock as they monitor for signs of seizure activity.

Melissa and Tim Kearney, who are deaf and hard of hearing, needed an alert system designed to meet their family’s needs at night.

Thanks to Court Prather, a care coordinator from the University of Illinois Chicago’s Division of Specialized Care for Children, they now have a medical alert system that meets those needs. Prather connected the family with two organizations — Medlaunch UIUC, a student-led group from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Danny Did Foundation — that created a solution and provided funds for a custom alert system called “SeizureSense.”

“I’m up and down all night, checking to be sure she’s OK,” Tim Kearney said. “Having an alarm that lets me know she’s up or having a seizure is a life-changer.”

The alert system project has been in the works for over a year, Prather said.

“We looked everywhere for an existing monitor system to catch Makaelyn’s seizures at night,” Prather said. “We found an app that could be installed on a phone and would vibrate, but the vibration level was just not enough. The other systems we found in the U.S. all had an audible alert.”

But Prather continued to research and found help through the Danny Did Foundation and MedLaunch UIUC.

The Danny Did Foundation focuses on raising awareness about epilepsy, preventing Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy and helping families with seizure detection and prediction devices that may help to prevent seizure-related deaths. The foundation awarded the family a grant to pay for the alert monitor.

MedLaunch UIUC is a student-led organization at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that works with people with disabilities to design, build and deliver devices that improve their lives. MedLaunch accepts project applications each fall, and student teams choose a project to tackle during the academic year.

“Our design process focuses on developing a product to fit a person’s specific needs,” said team lead Ryan Sullivan, an engineering student.

Prather, the Kearneys and their American Sign Language interpreter Teresa Fulling were impressed with the Medlaunch team’s attention to detail and passion for accessibility.

“Everyone asked a lot of good questions that helped us narrow down and focus on what we needed,” Melissa Kearney said.

Sullivan, along with other Medlaunch team members Matthew Tan, Hussein Thahab, Kriti Mathur and Eric Vo, recently unveiled the specialized SeizureSense system to the Kearney family. The system includes:

• An alert light and vibration component.
• A monitor in Makaelyn’s room that communicates with alert devices in her parents’ bedrooms.
• A backup battery in case of a power outage.

Once SeizureSense was in place, the team carefully tested the system. It worked perfectly.

“The U of I team was truly passionate about solutions and what works best for us parents and what works out for (Makaelyn’s) care needs. They were willing to come back and continue problem-solving so that all different areas were thoroughly taken care of for long-term use at home,” Melissa Kearney said.

— Amanda Simhauser, Division of Specialized Care for Children