Robotic teddy bear helps teach diabetic kids to manage their condition

Jerry the Bear is a soft, cuddly teddy bear that features blinking eyes, insulin injection sites and a glucose-level display so that kids can learn about their condition by helping to monitor and maintain Jerry's good health.

For kids with long-term illnesses like Type 1 diabetes, it can be a struggle not just to understand their condition, but also to learn how to manage it. That’s where Jerry the Bear comes in. The soft, cuddly teddy bear features both blinking eyes and insulin injection sites, as well as a glucose-level display so that kids can learn about their condition by helping to monitor and maintain Jerry’s good health. Jerry the Bear was conceived by two Northwestern University students as a Design for America project. Equipped with a toy injection pen, kids can use the robotic toy to learn about the importance of regular insulin injections and even practice giving them, similar in many ways to ‘Rufus, the Bear with Diabetes’. Jerry, however, also boasts a display on his chest that indicates his blood glucose level and his eyelids become droopy when his blood sugar gets low. An array of pretend foods can be fed to him to help manage those levels and sensors in his mouth even enable him to respond to what he’s fed. The video below explains the premise in more detail: Having already gone through several prototypes, Jerry the Bear is aimed for a market launch in 2013, according to a Good Worldwide report. Eventually, the toy’s makers — now based in Rhode Island as a startup named Sproutel — hope to target other diseases with similar educational offerings. Healthcare entrepreneurs: one to get involved in? Spotted by: Florent Lesauvage