Frank Nguyen wasn’t like most kids. When he went to school, his heart stayed at home.

That’s where his mother was.

He couldn’t stop worrying about her. In Grade 6 he confessed that he was distracted by the clock on the wall in his classroom. He’d keep looking at it to see the time, and he’d burn to know whether she was all right.

“My mom started getting really sick,” Frank recalled. “I’d be scared she would have problems and I didn’t know about it.”

The disquiet trailed him for years. Now he’s 17 and she’s blind in one eye, partially sighted in the other, and has trouble hearing. She’s also prone to bouts of dizziness, has thyroid issues, and was recently referred to a cardiologist for an irregular heartbeat.

But Frank has big plans.

Inspired by his accumulated concern for his mother, who is 60 and named Lan, Frank poured himself into a summer project at a special tech camp at Ryerson University. Now he has a prototype of a working heart rate alert device that he hopes will one day launch a start up business. Called the HelpWear HeartWatch, the blocky yellow contraption sits on the wrist and uses a light and sensor to track the heart rate. In the event of a heart attack, it is programmed to send a text message to a loved one or emergency services.

That means no more worrying in the dark.

“I had an idea of trying to make something that could help her, but it wasn’t until this year, when her doctor said her heart sounded kind of weird … That’s when the idea of a heart monitor came up,” said Frank. “You just hear a lot of statistics about people dying of heart attacks. It’s really scary.”

Frank and Lan live together in northwest Toronto, in the Jane St. and Finch Ave. neighbourhood. During the Vietnam War, Lan had an ear infection that festered and went untreated; health problems have persisted and spread ever since. Lan doesn’t go outside much anymore, because of her bad hearing and limited sight, and aside from the odd after-school job Frank has picked up, mother and son subsist on monthly disability cheques from the government.

Standing with her son in the atrium of Ryerson’s Student Learning Centre this week, Lan told the Star about how Frank missed Grade 3 when they travelled to Vietnam to get herbal treatments for her poor health. They returned the following year, and Frank had a much looser grasp on English. But to Lan’s surprise he outperformed most of his class in Grade 4 math, and his scholastic prowess has been on the upswing ever since.

When he was in Grade 8, Frank challenged the entry exam and was accepted into the Math, Science and Technology (MaST) program at Danforth Collegiate. He raked in awards for his science projects and high marks as he honed his knowledge of circuitry, electrical currents and programming, and learned to solder pieces of computer hardware. He often stays up all night working, stints of devotion that keep Lan awake, too.

“I ask him is it talent or hard work,” Lan said. “He told me ‘hard work.’”

Frank and his good friend Andre Bertram have been exploring the heart rate device project for months, but they weren’t able to make a prototype until Frank was one of 12 high school students invited to join the Basecamp tech program this summer at Ryerson’s Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The program, which involved high schoolers for the first time this year, is meant to help aspiring electrical engineers and tech whizzes refine and design gadgets that could one day launch businesses.

Frank and Andre were one of five groups who presented their HeartWatch at Ryerson on Wednesday night, where they pitched the device as a piece of wearable technology that has the potential to hasten emergency response times, save lives and—most significantly for Frank—assuage the worries that linger when you’re away from the people you love.

Asked how she feels knowing she’s the inspiration for her son’s hard work, Lan turned to Frank and, speaking quickly in Vietnamese before turning to answer. “So proud of my son,” she said, tears welling behind her glasses.

Frank starts Grade 12 in a few weeks. After that he wants to go to the University of Waterloo for its electrical engineering program.

And if he gets in, he said he’s bringing his mom with him.

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HOW FRANK’S GADGET WORKS

The SafeWatch prototype looks like a clunky wristwatch with a plastic yellow encasing that was 3D printed to fit Frank’s arm for his Ryerson demonstration. There are two microcontrollers that serve as the “brains” of the computer, Frank explained. There is also a memory unit with eight gigabytes of space, a system to send messages via cellular networks, GPS to determine the device’s location, and two rechargeable lithium ion batteries.

When someone straps the monitor on their wrist, a small green light on the bottom flashes against the skin. The blood, being red, reflects that light back into a sensor on the watch and the computer is programmed with an algorithm to determine the heart rate from the changes in voltage that the censor receives, Frank said. The monitor is set to record a beats-per-minute value every time the heart beats twice. The computer then stores this data with a time-stamp, and can be retrieved by sticking the memory card into a computer, Frank said.

The aspect that Frank is most excited about, however, is the device’s ability to essentially call 911. He has set the monitor to detect when someone’s heart rate strays outside the normal range. When it does for 50 consecutive “rate checks,” the monitor will send a preordered send of information via text message to emergency services, including the person’s age, medical history and location, Frank said.

HOW FRANK GOT THERE

It’s not easy to do what Frank has done. But he chalks it all up to Danforth Collegiate, where he said he learned everything he knows in that school’s Math, Science and Technology Program.

How’d he get in?

Frank heard of the program through his own research when he was in Grade 8 at Oakdale Park Middle School. He had to fill out an application form that included his Grade 7 report card and a short essay. Then there was an entrance exam based on the Grade 7 and 8 science and technology curriculum featuring short and long answer math questions.

How does he get there?

It’s a long haul from Jane and Finch to Danforth and Greenwood. Frank does it every day, hopping on a bus to Downsview Station and riding the subway into the east end, a trek that it usually takes about an hour and a half—each way.

“You get used to it,” he said. “Now no other commute feels long.”