Roberto D'Angelo, a Microsoft employee, and his colleagues have developed an application that alerts parents if their kids are having a seizure.

Their project, MirrorHR -- Epilepsy Research Kit for Kids, was named for this year's grand prize at the company's annual global hackathon, produced by The Garage. The Garage is a Microsoft programme that encourages employees to work on projects they are passionate about. D'Angelo used MirrorHR on his 8-year-old son, Mario, who has suffered potentially life-threatening seizures since he was 3. Mario's parents are using the new system -- a mobile app connected to a wearable device that sends alerts when anomalous activity might indicate a seizure -- so they no longer have to monitor their son.

It helps allay the biggest fear that a seizure could lead to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDE). For the findings, the research team worked together over about three months to develop the end-to-end, scalable proof of concept that is currently being tested by Mario. If a seizure is about to happen, parents can catch it at the onset and take immediate actions, such as preventing falls or other trauma and making sure the child does not swallow vomit.

It means there is less likelihood the parents will have to rush to the emergency room or miss the seizure entirely. The biometric data and daily video logs are stored in a Microsoft Azure-powered FHIR Server. Machine learning and data visualisation techniques are applied to this information to offer parents and doctors easy-to-read visuals and insights using Power business intelligence (BI) tools.