According to the World Health Organization, Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children. And yet, as inventor Katherine Kawecki tells us, “this problem has been severely under-addressed.”
Kawecki would know. An international runner-up for the James Dyson Award, Kawecki has suffered from asthma since she was four years old, and along with the pain and fear she experienced through her own attacks, the inventor grew up seeing how frightening the disease was for her parents.
“It’s a very helpless feeling. Extremely helpless,” her mother, Joanna says. “That you cannot actually help your child.”
Being in the midst of an asthma attack is horrible for any child, but also for their caretakers. Not knowing when an attack is going to be triggered can truly affect the quality of life for an entire family. And while there are many products and treatments to address a full-fledged episode once it starts, Kawecki found — through her own battle — that there was little being done to identify and prevent attacks before they occur.
Kawecki’s invention, Respia, is a trio of products designed to identify potential attacks before they become serious. By creating a system that tracks the acoustics of the lungs, sends alerts to parent/caretakers’ smartphones, and then incorporates a smart inhaler that can identify patterns and more accurately distribute and keep track of medicine, Respia can prevent asthma from escalating to the point of hospitalization. For young children, who are often unable to express or recognize early breathing problems, this can be a lifesaver.
“I understand the challenges I faced growing up and the challenges my parents faced,” Kawecki says. One of these big challenges is how to predict when breathing has become compromised the minute it happens because every second pre-attack is crucial. By applying her own experience, technical expertise and design skills, Kawecki has found the perfect path to create change for families struggling with asthma.
Watch the video above to see how Kawecki’s innovative design works. And to learn more about the James Dyson Award, visit https://www.jamesdysonaward.org.
