Invincible: The T1D App for Teaching Caregivers
Like clockwork
Families who have a child with type 1 diabetes face an annual hurdle: how to prepare their child’s school to support the student with diabetes. Questions arise like:
- Does the school have a nurse?
- Who is in charge of my child’s health?
- Where can we store low snacks so that they are accessible to the student?
- Can they carry a cell phone as a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) receiver?
- Will the teacher understand why the student needs accommodations for their type 1 diabetes (T1D)?
Bob Weishar, founder of Invincible, saw this need and started his company in order to teach non-healthcare personnel at schools all about T1D and how to best support their students.
“There is only one school nurse for every 1600 students in schools across the US,” Weishar says. “The primary job of a school is education, but one in four kids has health needs during the school day. How do you coordinate care when the resources just aren’t there?”
Bob was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a college freshman and went through the process of learning how to manage his health on his own while completing his undergraduate studies. After beginning his career in business and healthcare consulting, he decided that he wanted to have a larger impact on the diabetes world. He started Invincible to help families get the support they need and provide kids the support and resources they need as they grow into adults with T1D.
What it does
There are three components to the Invincible app: education, communication and coordination. The education component has been in beta testing throughout 2019 and is scheduled to launch at the beginning of 2020. Weishar and his team put the education component through rigorous testing in the school setting through a pilot program in five northern California school districts. They have incorporated the feedback from these pilot users to make the best product possible to serve the audience of educators they are trying to reach.
Invincible’s educational app is unique because it focuses on user experience and comprehension with eye-catching graphics and animations that make interactive education of T1D accessible to its target audience: teachers and administrators who fill the school nurse role when there is no school nurse.
The next phase of Invincible’s pilot launched in early October 2019 and is a communication piece for the schools and parents to correspond about the student’s health during the school day. The final component will be a mechanism for care coordination with the student’s family and healthcare providers.
Thanks to you
Bob and Invincible see the caregivers as everyday superheroes and want to support them as they support children with T1D. The focus on schools emerged because parents found educating the educators to be a pain point in their everyday life with T1D. Serving families is Bob’s #1 goal with this company, so now that they are approaching the public launch of their app, they are looking for more input and feedback from families. Invincible is designed to meet the needs of families and children, so continuing to hear from the community is vital to the success of the app design and launch.
If you are interested in joining Bob’s focus group of pilot testers of the app, please indicate your interest here. Proper education on the basics of T1D care is so important, and Invincible aims to meet this need in a fun and engaging way.
Check out this in-depth review of a company leveraging diabetes technology—Steady Health: A New Type of Diabetes Care.
