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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Twin sisters Delaney and Hadley Robertson, who are about to start high school, came up with a way to help countless children living with scoliosis.
They came up with BraceTrack, an app that helps keep track of how long one should wear a scoliosis brace.
Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine affecting millions around the world and is usually diagnosed by the time children reach the age of 12.
Wearing custom-made braces around the torso for long hours is a common way to prevent the condition from getting worse and avoid surgery. For a brace to work, patients have to wear them diligently, no matter how active their lifestyle.
Two years ago, during a routine physical, Hadley was diagnosed with the condition herself.
“I was diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis when I was 12. For that, I had to wear a brace for 18 hours a day for two years,” Hadley said.
At the time, Hadley states that they were doing a lot of sports. One thing I was doing in particular, is synchronized swimming – that’s one thing you really can’t wear a brace, in the water.”
Keeping track of the necessary time wearing the brace proved most challenging.
“We tried using a notepad or a whiteboard but neither of them really worked. So we thought that there would be an app on the App Store that could help us but there wasn’t, so we decided to develop one ourselves,” said Hadley.
“We were just really were passionate about this project. We sort of jumped in doing research on scoliosis, we sort of designed the app everything that we want to have all the features. Say you want to go to the beach one day for a few hours, so you only want to wear it 14 hours, not 18, you can overtime on another day and ‘bank up’ those hours,” Delaney explained.
In addition to logging the time, it creates reports that can be sent to family and physicians. It has been deemed quite successful, with a lot of users.
“I think we have over 500 users at this point,” said Hadley.
Aware that bracing is expensive, the twins raised $50,000 to help children receiving treatment at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital through their organization ‘Brace for Impact’.
And they are not done.
They are working to improve the app by adding a sensor, to track the time automatically.
“We’ve been amazed by the replies that we’ve been getting,” said Hadley.
The twin sisters also host an educational travel and cooking show on public television.
If you would like to submit a story idea for Miami Proud, please send an email to aphillips@cbs.com
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