I Code to Save Lives: Delian Asparouhov at TEDxYouth@CharlesRiver

Imagine you're 14 years old again. You're the star soccer player on your school's team. One day, as you're playing, you start feeling a bit feverish for some reason. You also have to go to the bathroom a lot. You. You go to the doctor's office and they diagnose you with type 1 diabetes. You're shocked. You're worried. You don't know if you can go outside and play with your friends without your blood sugar dipping too low. In an ideal world, your doctor would give you some sort of magical bracelet. This bracelet would be able to continuously monitor your blood sugar. Not only that, but it would deliver your insulin as required. Sadly, that's not the way the world works. Instead, you as a diabetic, have to prick your finger throughout the day to get a blood sample. Not only that, but you have to eat fruits and stab yourself with a needle as necessary. Not quite as fun as playing soccer. There are two problems that I'm really passionate about that affect patients in the healthcare industry. And I believe that both of these problems can be solved with technology to create a world where our magical bracelet is a real possibility. The first is early diagnosis, and the second problem is medication adherence. And I'm going to dive into both of those. In 2009, my grandmother came to visit me and my family over the summer. During her visit, she overheard my mom and her friends talking about breast self examinations. A week later, she started chemotherapy. In 2004, Bill Clinton mentioned that he was feeling a bit short of breath. Three days later, he was having a quadruple bypass surgery. Now, what do both of these stories have in common? It's that both these people, even though they had access to some of the top healthcare institutions in the entire world, didn't begin their treatment until after their symptoms had already been expressed. But isn't this how health care works? You go to your doctor with your problems, they put on their Sherlock Holmes hat and solve them. Is this really how it should work? I believe that the world, in 50 years, will look back on our generation and find us to be barbarians. Why? Because we treat based off of symptoms when the patient is already suffering from the disease. By the time my grandmother had made it to the hospital, her tumor was already in a late stage. By the time Bill had made it, his arteries were already over 90% clogged. Thankfully, both of them recovered and their health is back to normal. But both of their survival chances would have been much higher if their disease had been detected much earlier. And the US Is headed in the right direction to solving this problem with technology. For the first time, genetic screening has become affordable for the average American. This means you can check not only your, but even your potential offspring's risk for diseases. And that way, we all as soccer players could have had a little bit more warning. Because as it turns out, our long lost uncle was also a diabetic and that's why we were at risk for the disease. However, this technology has not really taken off yet. Why? Because we as consumers haven't been demanding for it. We don't truly grasp its benefits. So that's the problem of early diagnosis. And now I'm going to chat a little bit about medication adherence. When you, let's say you happen to discover a disease early on, before it's become really dangerous, you're not quite scot free yet. You go to the doctor's office and they'll give you something that looks like this. However, you and I, we're busy people. We like to travel, we like to stay out late at dinner parties. We don't have time to be bothered with this. This is one of the most frustrating issues a doctor deals with on a daily basis. Patients won't follow their prescription. Not only that, but they'll lie about it when they come back into the office. And this can be incredibly confusing for a doctor because they're thinking that the medications just aren't working. 50% of the US is on some sort of prescription, and of those, half of them are non adherent, meaning that they're not taking their medications as their doctor told them to. Now, there are a variety of reasons people are non adherent. Some are more serious than others. Some people don't want to suffer through the adverse side effects that their medications give them. Some can't necessarily afford their refill, and some just can't understand the complex instructions that their doctor has given them. But a solid 40% of these individuals want to take their medications, but they just forget. And the US Is headed in the right direction to solving this problem with technology as well. The FDA made a huge step in late 2011. It approved the first medical device which plugs into a smartphone. This device is a mobile glucose monitor. It allows diabetics to check their blood sugar level from an app. So that way we all as soccer players can check how much insulin we need as easily as we can tweet. And it doesn't stop just there. Other companies are developing much more holistic and emotional solutions. One of my favorites is Jerry the bear with diabetes. Jerry's a teddy bear. Which teaches small children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes about their disease and how to manage it. Jerry comes equipped with his own little marker that's supposed to be an insulin pen. You can feed Jerry cards that represent food. And Jerry will talk back to you. He'll let you know what's going on in his body. He'll let you know how much insulin he needs. So that way, we all, as a soccer player, have a toy that we can cuddle with at night that can connect with us, with what we suffer with. However, as amazing as both of these technologies are, neither of them has really taken off yet. There are 26 million Americans suffering from diabetes, yet most don't use this. Why? Because they're not searching for these solutions. They're not demanding for them. We're at a point where we interact with more digital chips than we do medical professionals, and I believe we can use this fact to fundamentally change health care. I believe that checking how clogged your arteries are and how large your tumor is should be as easy to check as your email. And I believe that managing your disease and taking your medications should be as easy to do as remembering to brush your teeth at night. However, this world cannot be created unless we as consumers demand for these solutions. So if there are three things that I want you to get away from my talk, it's that, one, there are fundamental health care patterns that are broken today, and that two, we're headed in the right direction to solving these problems with technology. But three, and most importantly, that the only way to drive this innovation is for we as consumers to demand for it. I believe that together we can create a world where every child has their version of Jerry the bear. And I believe that someone in this audience will help make our magical bracelet a real possibility. Thank you.