From Military.com:
“Smartwatch
App for PTSD-Related Nightmares Now Available by Prescription from VA, DoD”
After returning
home to Minnesota after a yearlong combat deployment to Iraq in 2007, Army
veteran Patrick Skluzacek showed classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress
disorder. His son Tyler, then just 13 years old, told CNN his father was
depressed, lethargic, angry and had trouble sleeping. Worst of all, the
then-43-year-old suffered from "vivid" nightmares. Like many families
of veterans suffering from PTSD, the Skluzaceks didn't know what to do for
their dad. But with the help of emerging mental health and biometric
technology, Tyler Skluzacek would be able to develop an app to help his father
and veterans like him get better sleep -- and he'd do it all before graduating
from college. For Patrick Skluzacek, the help couldn't come fast enough. "I
was scared of closing my eyes," he told CNN. "They were just
horrible, so vivid, I'd wake up thrashing and sweating. And [The Department of
Veterans Affairs] didn't have a cure for it. They just had people with
nightmares, people killing themselves, and they didn't understand why." Tyler
would go on to attend Minnesota's Macalester College, according to the Star
Tribune, a Minnesota newspaper. As a computer programming senior in 2015, he
attended a 36-hour hackathon in Washington, D.C. -- where he created
"MyBivy" (short for bivouac, a military camping term), an app that
would wake the sleeper up in the event of a nightmare.
MyBivy is now
known as NightWare, and it's a smartwatch app that monitors a sleeper's
movement and heart rate. When it detects changes that indicate a coming
nightmare, the app creates vibration patterns in the watch to rouse the
sleeper. After winning the hackathon, Tyler Skluzacek took his idea to
Kickstarter, raising $25,000 for its development. After NightWare bought the
app, the company applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its
clearance as a medical device. Now cleared by the FDA as a
"breakthrough" device, the prescription-only kit comes with a
smartwatch and iPhone preloaded with the NightWare app. Once prescribed, the
cost of the kit is now covered by the VA and the Department of Defense. NightWare
is also working to help those not covered by either department get access to
the NightWare technology. Tyler told the Star-Tribune that he read Tim
O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" in 10th grade to better
understand his father's condition. That reading, combined with talking to
veterans in the course of developing the app, helped him better understand his
veteran father, though they are still worlds apart. "I'm not a vet. I
don't know what he's been through," Tyler told the paper. "Talking to
a bajillion -- and that's close to an accurate number -- veterans, I understand
him better." To learn more about the prescription-only app or how to get a
prescription, visit the NightWare website.
^ This is really
cool. I hope it helps Soldiers and everyone else with PTSD. ^
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