Meet the Manchester teens fighting alcohol addiction with tech
Sixth formers from Altrincham scooped £10,000 for a smartwatch invention(Image: Supplied)
While many 18-year-olds are celebrating the end of exams with a few pints, three sixth formers from Altrincham have spent their final year of school developing an invention that could save lives – and won £10,000 doing it.
Daniel Aju, Harris Asif and Nahom Ghirmay – school friends from Manchester – have created Sanoband, a smartwatch-compatible invention that aims to support people in recovery from alcohol addiction. It aims to detect cravings early and steps in with automatic support.
Their invention just scooped the top prize in their category in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow competition, beating nearly 50 teams and more than 500 applicants across the UK and Ireland.
School friends Daniel Aju, Nahom Ghirmay and Harris Asif won top prize in their age category(Image: Supplied)
But this isn’t just a clever science project, it’s personal.
“I had a family member who passed away from liver failure as a result of his alcohol addiction,” Nahom told the Manchester Evening News. “That experience always led my parents to warn me to never get involved in drugs and alcohol – and to never even take a sip.”
Nahom said that that experience ‘shaped his view around alcoholism’, with his parents emphasising that it is not the addict’s fault.
“It’s a biological thing that you can’t stop when it gets a hold of you. Don’t blame them and think they’re stupid,” he added.
This personal connection, shared in different ways by all three teens, sparked the idea to tackle alcohol addiction – what they describe as a ‘big’ and ‘local’ problem.
Daniel, Nahom and Harris presented the idea of Sanoband to judges(Image: Supplied)
According to research by the University of Manchester, people living in the North of England are more likely to die from alcohol, drugs and suicide, with alcohol-specific deaths making up almost half of all ‘deaths of despair’ in England.
Between the years 2021 to 2023, the national average across the UK was 15 deaths caused by alcohol for every 100,000 people. In Greater Manchester, the rate was 19 deaths for every 100,000 people.
“How are three random guys from Alty going to tackle this?” Daniel said. “Going into this was a bit daunting because it’s such a big problem to try and tackle. It has been a big challenge and we’ve learnt a lot throughout the whole thing.”
Sanoband, which gets its name from the Latin word for ‘healthy’, uses biometric data like heart rate, heart rate variability and electrodermal activity – all collected by a smartwatch – to detect signs that a person may be craving alcohol.
The trio designed a Sanoband app for people struggling with alcohol addiction(Image: Supplied)
When a craving is detected, it automatically triggers support, such as calling a trusted contact or prompting guided breathing and meditation.
“From the research we did, speaking to a lot of AA users, the main thing that helped them when they were feeling cravings was just talking to someone,” said Nahom. “They wanted it to happen automatically because they don’t have enough willpower when they’re struggling at that moment.”
“That’s the main problem it solves. When they’re struggling, everything gets done for them automatically as if they are already in rehab,” he added.
To get here, the trio spent hours reading scientific journals, speaking to researchers in the field and surveying people in recovery. As part of the competition process, they had access to tech mentors, who offered industry advice and feedback and how to bring the product to life.
The app is designed to automatically trigger support interventions when cravings are detected(Image: Supplied)
With a cocktail of impressive A-Level subjects between them – like Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science, Physics and Product Design – the boys had the brains and ambition, but they say the mentors offered the experience and knowledge to help them “pull it off”.
And their win came as a shock.
“When they announced who second place was, that’s when we realised we had actually done it,” said Daniel. “We just all looked at each other and said ‘What the hell. We’ve done it’. It was pretty cool.”
“My dad sent a message back home,” Harris added. “My siblings told me they heard my mum scream with happiness. She was ecstatic and none of us were expecting us to actually get first place.”
The team say the £10,000 prize will be used to develop the idea further by investing in the machine learning model at the heart of it all. The team plans to collect more data and refine their app, which they hope will one day be used not just for alcohol addiction, but for other forms of substance abuse.
“In the future, we’d like to see it applied to more than just alcohol abuse but general substance abuse and maybe even microaddictions,” said Harris. “We’d love to see Sanoband in every home.”
Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow competition is open to anyone aged 16-25 across the UK and Ireland.