Emergency salt inhalant release device
Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by overwhelming daytime drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep. People with narcolepsy often find it difficult to stay awake for long periods of time, regardless of the circumstances. This effect can be fatal in high-risk situations, such as driving a car or operating dangerous equipment. Narcolepsy is known to affect 3 - 16% of the world's population and only 25% of those with the disorder have been clinically diagnosed (https://narcolepsynetwork.org/...).
Our nose-ring device is equipped with a chamber containing ammonia inhalants that is contained within a concealed chamber, the opening to which is controlled by signals coming from a receiver listening to brain wave patterns emitted by the user. First stage sleep is known to be associated with producing low frequency delta waves, which will be used as a threshold trigger for our device to open or close the inhalant chamber. When delta waves are detected the chamber opens and exposes the inhalant to the user's nose and the chamber stays open for as long as the delta waves are detected, that is for as long as the user is asleep. Once the user wakes up the device ceases to detect delta waves and closes off the inhalant chamber in response.
The device has been designed to improve the lives of those afflicted with narcolepsy and people who are directly impacted by those with the disorder, healthcare practitioners treating patients with narcolepsy and medical device manufacturers who will be producing and redistributing this product.
Our solution is innovative and nothing similar currently exists in the global market.
Our understanding is that there has been a lack of attention paid to those that experience sleep attacks on a regular basis.
We have done extensive research on the current solutions available to those suffering from narcolepsy and did not find any similar option available for those suffering from this disorder.
- Support daily care management for patients and/or their caregivers
- Concept
Our product is in its fundamental research stages and will require a substantial financial investment to carry out proper institutional research about the implications/hazards associated with using the device.
We will also need volunteers willing to test out our device without knowing information about the hazards in depth. The volunteers would also have to be willing to test our device in high risk situations.
In our research we could not find any products that use smelling salts to awaken people from sleep attacks.
Over the next year we hope to have a market-testable beta prototype available for use. In the next five years we hope to have expanded to having this device available for public use in North American countries.
We plan to use data related to accidents stemming from sleep attacks and quantify if introducing our product to the market has an impact on the number of accidents.
Our solution aims to aid people suffering from sleep attacks, that is also fast responding, autonomous and minimally harmful to the body. Some common methods of restoring consciousness may include the use of shock therapy, loud noises, physical disturbances, etc. Salt inhalants would serve as a solution that outperforms all of the previous methods overall.
On the fundamental level, the device makes use of an oscillator to detect frequencies of incoming waves that is passed through a low-pass filter to filter out high-frequencies. Then it will retain low-frequencies, which delta waves are primarily composed of. The low-pass filter will control the opening and closing of the gate to the inhalant chamber through a transistor that is set to high on detecting delta waves and low otherwise.
- A new technology
- Biotechnology / Bioengineering
- Imaging and Sensor Technology
- Manufacturing Technology
- Materials Science
- 3. Good Health and Well-being
- 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
- 14. Life Below Water
- 15. Life on Land
- Canada
- Canada
- United States
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
The leadership team is made up of engineers with different cultural backgrounds which has given a broader scope of the problem and how it impacts people in different countries with varying access to healthcare.
Our business model consists of fabricating the devices and shipping them to medical device suppliers for distribution. Our customers are interested in the product because they can live fuller lives without their daily activities impacted by sleep attacks with our device.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
We will apply for startup venture capital to aid with the initial design and testing of the device. After our first shipments we will reinvest the profits back into the organization.
Being in the design phase, our plan for financial sustainability is to estimate the initial costs of materials and adjust our strategy to apply for the appropriate capital.

Software Engineer