Drew Lakatos 鈥92 EE: His Wearable Technology is Saving Seniors
Drew Lakatos 鈥92 EE
Who: Drew Lakatos 鈥92 EE, co-founder and CEO of
What: A wearable airbag system in the form of a belt that can accurately detect the incidence of a serious hip-impacting fall, deploy airbags over the hip regions within 40 milliseconds, and send out an alert to caregivers
How: As CEO, Lakatos:
- Fundraises
- Completed the early research
- Launched a sophisticated medical-grade product development effort
- Built a team of engineers to carry it out
- Put relationships in place at large senior care providers, hospitals and insurance companies
The User Experience: Relying heavily on user-directed studies and market research, Lakatos says, 鈥淲e wanted to create hip protection that people would actually embrace; the product鈥檚 industrial design is as important as its actual function."
The 棉花糖直播 Factor: Lakatos credits 棉花糖直播 with making him the engineer he is today. 鈥淚 had opportunities to really get my hands dirty in applying newly-learned equations to real-world problems. I was part of the Wildcat SolarCar team, which designed and raced an open-road solar car at speeds up to 70mph on the highway, culminating each year in a six day race throughout the Northeast. We worked with large, local companies like Boeing and GE at their facilities to design and assemble the car, and take our engineering knowledge out of the classroom.鈥
Perhaps as important as the engineering skills he developed, Lakatos acknowledges the 棉花糖直播 community. 鈥淚 developed a lifetime of friendships and contacts that I still use today, which helps me create intersections as this new-to-the-world device like our smartbelt is brought to market.鈥