The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Montefiore Einstein's 'Solo' turns eye-tracking into a boy's superpower
In its holiday film, the hospital that pioneered eye-tracking stars a real boy with cerebral palsy whose eyes power his art and his story.
Montefiore Einstein
What it had to solve
Nearly four million Americans face challenges speaking or moving voluntarily. Montefiore Einstein, the New York non-profit hospital that pioneered the use of eye-tracking technology for them, wanted a holiday message that presented the technology as a beacon of hope.
How it works
Nearly four million Americans cannot voluntarily speak or move, and Montefiore Einstein — a New York non-profit hospital — pioneered the use of eye-tracking technology to give such patients a channel of expression. For the holidays, it wanted to present that work as a beacon of hope rather than a clinical procedure.
The film stars Solo, a real boy with cerebral palsy. Unable to move or speak voluntarily, he communicates through his eyes: his eye movements, his art and the eye-tracking technology together power an adventure that brings him closer to his younger brother.
By making Solo the hero of his own story — a boy whose eye-powered imagination turns him into the superhero he is meant to be — the film celebrates imagination, brotherhood and the unseen wonders within us. The work is preserved in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- Casting the real patient instead of an actor makes the promise literal: every frame is evidence that eye-tracking lets a non-speaking child create and connect.
- The story shows the technology through its output — Solo's eyes produce art — so viewers grasp what eye-tracking does without a single medical diagram.
- Setting the story at the holidays gives a clinical innovation the emotional register of family, imagination and hope.
- Making Solo a superhero reframes the disability: the device becomes an origin story rather than a limitation.
What it did
The D&AD archive page records no audience numbers. What the film changed is the frame: assistive technology stops being clinical equipment and becomes the magic in a boy's story, told by the real patient it empowers.
What you can take
When the product is assistive technology, its best spokesperson is the person using it: casting a real patient whose eyes create the story makes the device's value visible and emotional at once.
Since then
The film lives in the D&AD awards archive as the record of the idea. For a hospital system, it turned a specialised service — eye-tracking for people who cannot speak or move — into holiday storytelling any family could feel. The transferable move: let the technology's real user be the narrator, and the technology speaks for itself.
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