‘Grandma was my chief research partner’
How Lewis Hornby’s beloved grandma Pat helped him develop a sweet that’s benefitting thousands of older people avoid life-threatening dehydration
fter receiving the sad news that his beloved grandma Pat had been taken to hospital and was not expected to live, Lewis Hornby prepared to head north to say his goodbyes.
“Things were not looking good and our family had been told to expect the worst,” recalls Lewis (26) who was living in London at the time. “But before I’d even starting planning my own trip, my mum had rung me back to say she was fine.”
Grandma Pat’s miracle comeback had been made possible by doctors
A‘It’s a dream to work on something I care about and it was good to do it with Grandma’
in Yorkshire who quickly realised her problem was dehydration. More than a third of older people admitted to hospital are acutely dehydrated and it’s especially common among those with dementia as they forget to drink.
After receiving fluids intravenously, Pat made a remarkable recovery. Although obviously not a cure for the dementia she’d had for several years, it did mean that Pat was well enough to return to the Harogate nursing home where she lived.
Stunned by her speedy recovery, Lewis began thinking about ways he could help her drink more water. And, as a postgraduate design engineer student, he also needed to invent a product – and here was his challenge.
“I thought it would be a good excuse to see more of grandma and it was a unique opportunity,” he recalls.
After a month spent at
Pat’s care home, working with doctors, dieticians and speech and language therapists, he came up with the concept of Jelly Drops. The tasty, sugar-free water sweets made up of 95 per cent water and electrolytes are teardrop shaped, so easy to pick up, and come in six natural fruity flavours. Each tray holds 24 jelly drops, equating to 300ml of water – around a glass and a half.
“It took me a while to get to that conclusion, which came when I was walking round the home with a box of chocolates in my hand and residents who mainly ignored me were suddenly my best friends!” he recalls.
During testing, a video taken by
Lewis with Pat, above, and right, the pair together when
he was a child
Lewis shows off his tasty hydrating sweets!
Lewis of Grandma Pat enjoying them, went viral with 100 million views on social media. Demand was massive and with university colleagues, Lewis began perfecting and producing them, scooping up several awards and a £100,000 investment from the Alzheimer’s Society.
Sadly Grandma Pat died of Covid-19 earlier this year aged 83 and Lewis and his family are facing their first Christmas without her. But he can take some comfort in the fact that his grandma had several more years of quality life after his loving intervention.
“I’m not sure she knew what I had done,” says Lewis. “But I think she would be proud of me – although she probably wouldn’t have said anything.”
Lewis now hopes that his innovative jelly drops will be marketed worldwide. “It’s a dream to work on something I care about and it was good to do it with
Grandma,” he adds.
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