Prolific North has featured the story behind MYQER, tracing the platform back to the moment that changed everything for founder Anita Boros and her daughter, Gia.
The feature tells the story of an ordinary morning at home that became an emergency within seconds.
Gia was just two years old when she took a bite of homemade pancakes and rapidly developed a severe anaphylactic reaction. She became red almost immediately and was rushed to Manchester Children’s Hospital, where subsequent allergy testing confirmed that she had reacted to egg.
For Anita, the immediate emergency eventually ended.
The worry did not.
She left hospital with EpiPens, brief training on how to use them and a completely different understanding of how quickly an ordinary day can change.
At the time, Anita was already working in urgent and emergency care support within the NHS. She understood professionally that minutes and information matter.
But being a parent on the other side of an emergency was different.
She knew how to use the medication.
What she could not stop thinking about was what would happen if she was not there.
Would somebody else recognise what was happening to Gia?
Would they know about her allergy?
Would they know where her medication was?
Would they know who to call?
And how long would it take them to find that information while Gia needed help?
Those questions became even louder as Gia approached nursery age.
Anita told Prolific North that she looked at around 60 nurseries before finding one that gave her enough confidence and was willing to undertake the additional preparation around Gia’s needs. Even then, the anxiety did not disappear.
That became the point where worrying turned into building.
Anita describes herself as someone who cannot leave a problem alone once she knows it exists.
So she began working on a way to make important emergency information easier for another person to reach quickly, whether that person was a teacher, colleague, neighbour, first responder or simply the stranger who happened to be there first.
That idea became MYQER, My Quick Emergency Response, pronounced “my care”.
MYQER allows a person to create an Emergency Access Profile containing information they choose to make available in an emergency.
That can include allergies and reactions, medications, conditions, emergency contacts, communication needs, care preferences and other information that may help somebody understand what matters when the person themselves cannot easily explain it.
The Prolific North feature also explored the practical thinking that shaped MYQER.
Anita wanted it to be simple and immediately accessible rather than dependent on somebody already having the correct app or account. She also wanted emergency information to remain available in situations where connectivity could not be relied upon, which led to MYQER supporting both Online Emergency Access and Offline Emergency Access.
Privacy remained just as important.
MYQER is not intended to become another medical record or diagnostic system.
The aim is to give enough relevant context to help somebody understand the situation quickly, while keeping control of the information with the individual.
The feature also returned repeatedly to the person who started all of this.
Gia.
By then, Gia had MYQER available in the places where it could realistically be useful, including on belongings she took with her and, when appropriate, on a lanyard when away from school. For Anita, that was the most important proof that the original idea had become something practical.
MYQER has since grown beyond the original problem of childhood anaphylaxis.
The same access gap can exist for people living with many different conditions, medications, communication needs or support requirements.
But the principle has remained the same: critical information can exist and still be inaccessible when it matters most.
MYQER was created to help close that gap.
For Anita, the Prolific North feature captured something that can easily get lost once a platform becomes code, infrastructure, dashboards and product decisions.
Before any of that existed, there was simply a mum looking at her daughter and asking:
If I am not there next time, how will somebody know what she needs?
That question is still at the centre of MYQER today.