SenStore: Exploring Rachel Kalmar's Innovative Business of DIY Healthcare Sensors

Rachel Kalmar, at the Demo Conference this September in Santa Clara, California, kept falling every five minutes - on purpose. The neuroscience-trained martial artist was demonstrating a fall-detecting sensor that alerts the person's guardians, doctors and so on whenever that person falls. It was a product made by SenStore, a start-up she co-founded with her Singularity University batchmate Antony Evans.

The word SenStore breaks down into sensor store. And that's what it is. The start-up develops tools on the open-source Arduino platform for healthcare, by providing DIY (do-it-yourself) sensors.

Showing off the scar on her right elbow she earned from a falling demo, Kalmar explained how that fall-detecting sensor could be worn by senior citizens who live alone. It could alert their guardians and doctors whenever they are to have a fall and act immediately. She hopes the sensor could be used by her own 90-year-old grandmother who lives alone in LA, while her parents live a few hours away in San Diego. Similarly, sensors such as motion-sensitive cameras could detect stroke symptoms like the slurring of speech on time, and take immediate action to possibly reverse the stroke...