Bearings

Recovery, measured in the real world.

Bearings is a smartphone-only concept for monitoring recovery after orthopaedic surgery (the demo follows a total hip replacement). Instead of counting steps in isolation, it measures life-space recovery: whether a patient is getting back to the places, routines and independent journeys that were normal for them before surgery, compared with their own pre-operative baseline.

Built for the Francis Crick Institute Innovation Challenge 2026 (27 to 31 July, Track 3: Expanding Human Potential) by Emre Yavuz (science), Dr Iressa Cheng (clinical), Dr Jialin Feng (commercial), Lavinia Mitiko (models) and Edwin Ong (engineering). This repository is a faithful rebuild of the team's pitch-week prototype so that the product has a public, self-contained codebase.

What the prototype does

Two roles, one demo patient (Margaret, 72, six weeks after a hip replacement, living alone, daughter Anna 20 minutes away).

Patient view

• Home: life-space recovery as a percentage of the patient's own baseline (68% at week 6), a six-week sparkline, today's everyday mobility (outings, minutes outside, steps, travelled alone), gait speed and step count against baseline, the latest milestone, a weekly reflection prompt and a two-question daily check-in (company, confidence, barriers).
• Recovery journey: life-space, steps and gait plotted as percentages of baseline over one, six or twelve weeks, with the week 3 to 4 plateau highlighted and weeks 7 to 12 left deliberately empty ("Bearings does not predict future recovery"). Each measure is explained in plain language, alongside the patient's own pre-surgery routine.
• Recovery zones: a radial map (home, neighbourhood, community, wider familiar life) showing which familiar destinations have been resumed, for today, this week or since surgery. Places are shown as zones, never as routes.
• Milestones: a timeline of routines returning (first journey outside, pharmacy resumed, first independent outing, and so on).
• Profile: procedure and caregiver details, sharing permissions (what Anna can see, with live location never offered), a plain-language privacy centre, and a clinical recovery summary with baseline coverage and data completeness.

Caregiver view

• Overview: a gentle summary of progress, the shared metrics only, and the reminder that the patient controls what is shared.
• Progress: this week's plain-language summary, trend arrows and recent milestones.
• Support: optional, non-clinical ideas tied to routines not yet resumed (for example, offering to walk to the shop together).

Onboarding explains the four permissions (motion, location while using the app, notifications, caregiver sharing) one by one, each optional.

Design principles carried through from the pitch

• The patient's own life is the baseline. No population norms.
• Nothing enters a report unless it is passively measurable and meaningful for recovery.
• Patterns, not routes: precise location history is converted into zones and milestones on the device and never shown as a moving dot.
• Prevention and support, not prediction or diagnosis. The app never forecasts and never gives medical instructions.

Running it

npm install
npm run dev

Deep links skip the splash and onboarding, which is handy for demos and screenshots:

• /?tab=home, /?tab=recovery, /?tab=map, /?tab=milestones, /?tab=profile
• /?role=caregiver&tab=overview, /?role=caregiver&tab=progress, /?role=caregiver&tab=support

Stack

Vite, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS 4, Recharts, lucide-react. All data is static demo data in src/data.ts; there is no backend and nothing is collected.

Status

Demo build. Everything shown is illustrative: Margaret, Anna, the numbers and the milestones are invented to show the product, not real measurements.