Develop a solution to help people, especially those in a wheelchair with restricted mobility, to pick things up, for example from the floor or a cupboard above head height.

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Many people with brain injury forget how to perform basic tasks and have to undergo training to do things we all take for granted. Can you devise solutions to help people perform two tasks:

• 1) make a cup of tea
• 2) cook a simple meal?

Devise a solution to protect cyclists’ heads when they fall off their bicycles.

A group of clients from Headway Cambridgeshire has developed a board game to help them improve their memory. The challenge is to investigate the potential global demand for this game, find a manufacturer and distribution outlets, and secure sales.

Develop a solution to help people with brain injury, and their friends and families, quickly and easily identify and access all the resources and support available to help them recover or adapt to life with brain injury.

Seeker's Story

My name is Kate, and I am a Mother of three young boys – one of which, Brandon, had a brain injury at the age of 11. The critical nature of this treatment has lead to an intense period of recovery, not only for Brandon, but for the whole family. My husband and I found it hard to work and support the requirements of our family, and another of my sons found it incredibly difficult to adjust to a life where his idol, his big brother, was no longer able to give him the support that he was used to. For the first year following the accident, I and my 9 year old son required help due to post traumatic stress after witnessing Brandon fighting for his life. Within weeks of the accident, my husband was made redundant as it became very clear that we were both needed at home for Brandon's rehabilitation and the recovery of our whole family. Shortly after that, we were made homeless when we were asked to leave our rented accommodation and were financially unable to move which added to the intensity of the situation. My husband and I had to give up our jobs to become full time carers, learn about and depend on the benefits system, navigate the social housing system and network with various professionals including those involved with brain injury, rehabilitation and family therapy.

I spent the majority of my time in the early months after leaving the hospital setting looking for help to signpost us to appropriate support services; financial, practical and social. One particular service that we have found through CCPNR (Cambridge Centre for Paediatric Neuropsychological Rehabilitation) is the Child Brain Injury Trust. A support worker was assigned to us and has worked with us to find services and support my son in his return to school. The support is of course limited, and I have found myself spending hours at a time desperately searching the internet in hope of identifying services and chasing up potential sources of funding for my sons' rehabilitation.

My challenge to the MYH solvers to provide an affordable, accessible, comprehensive and interactive signposting portal for patients and carers following brain injury.

People with brain injury can lose the ability to communicate with their friends, family and carers particularly when it comes to explaining how they are feeling. They struggle to articulate the sense of anger, frustration, confusion, sadness and lack of hope they feel after their injury. This challenge is to develop a solution which enables people with brain injury to communicate how they are feeling but without actually speaking.

People with brain injury can suffer from “reduced sound tolerance”. For some people with this condition (called hyperacusis), all sounds can be too loud. Other people lose the ability to filter out sound e.g. in a railway station with friends, they can’t filter out the background noise and hear the voices of their companions. The challenge is to devise a solution to help people with reduced sound tolerance.