11-Year-Old Girl Who Battled Cancer Wins Coveted Inventor Award For IV Backpack She Designed For Friends

At eight years old Kylie Simonds was diagonsed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of the connective tissues. Now eleven, Kylie has been cancer-free for two years, but she still remembers the struggles of chemo and has friends fighting the disease. To make the lives of children in treatment a little easier, Kylie has designed an IV backpack for pediatric oncology units that has been winning awards at conventions as well as acclaim in the medical community.  Here’s the inventor herself explaining the impetus behind the award-winning design:

Kylie’s backpack won numerous awards at the recent Conneticut Inventors Convention, where she was also the only competitor to take home the Patent Award, which will send her design to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Medical officials have also voiced their excitement over the fun and easily-transportable design–Birte Wistinghausen, M.D., clinical director of the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Mount Sinai Hospital told Yahoo!:

I think it’s a wonderful idea. The stigma would fall away from seeing an IV pole [and] it would be very useful for pediatric oncology patients in providing them much more mobility and freedom.

Kylie’s parents have set up a CrowdRise page to help her build a working prototype of the IV backpack, but the fundraiser is currently only at 2% of its goal. To learn more about Kylie, her invention, and why this is such an important cause to support, you can also check out Courage for Kylie.

(via Huffington Post, pictures via GoFundMe)

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