From Oct. 6 to 8, 2017, the Stevens Venture Center hosted its first Digital Healthcare Hackathon. Fifty students out of 150 applicants whose majors included Computer Science, Business and Technology, Biomedical Engineering, and more participated in the three-day-long event.
The Hackathon involved the participants creating digital solutions to improve medical compliance and telemonitoring healthcare and ended with a final Pitch Competition, organized by Vishal Kadmar, in which the ten teams presented what they worked on to a panel of 6 judges to win money to fund their projects. CEOs and other executives in the healthcare industry participated in the event and served as mentors to the students, including Paul von Autenfried, the CEO of Bristol-Meyers Squibb, who gave the keynote address.
In third place came Diagnose Me, which predicted diagnoses through big data, and they won $2,000. Lux came in second place for focusing on integrating healthcare management through Amazon Echo for mental health management and won $3,000. And in first place came Ethyl, which created wearable tech for alcohol addiction recovery, winning the grand prize of $5,000.
Dr. Lombardi, Industry Professor at the School of Business and Master of Ceremonies for the hackathon, said the reason for the hackathon’s focus in digital healthcare was because 26% of New Jersey works in the delivery of healthcare. Lombardi added, “The past thirty years have seen more new innovations in the medicine, pharmaceutical, and healthcare supply industries than in the previous 100 years combined, so as The Innovation University that is recognized as a technology leader, Stevens should be the champion action advocate for competitions such as this truly breakthrough event.”
Zach Caldarola, one of the members of team Lux, participated in the event after his eventual teammate Mel Vicino reached out to him wondering if he wanted to work on the project with her. She had the business background as an Engineering Management major, and he had the programming background as a Computer Science major. On how they came up with their idea, Caldarola said, “We knew that we wanted to create something that would be used to help patients be compliant with their medications without being too intrusive. After a few different iterations, we landed on mocking up a phone app and developing an Amazon Alexa skill to do this.”
Dr. Lombardi believes that the Hackathon will have a strong impact on combatting many health problems. He said, “The charter of Stevens is to create new technologies and management strategies that benefit our community in general. Considering that the mission of healthcare is to use the combined intelligence, labor, and foresight of talented innovators to present meaningful solutions to vexing problems that beset those in pain and need – namely healthcare patients – a very promising and positive impact on our community is definitely in the offing.”
Caldarola believes that the long-term effects of the hackathon will encourage entrepreneurship in the Stevens community. He hopes that they continue to have this event “because a lot of great projects came out of this event in a field that is not always focused upon.”
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