A healthcare hackathon in South Jersey produced 3 ideas worth exploring

Some 50 doctors, researchers, devs and students spent last weekend at South Jersey Technology Park putting their minds to one task: improving healthcare.

As part of Health Hack, a healthcare hackathon organized by Rowan University and Inspira Health Network, nine teams of professionals from both institutions got to work on ideas that might help boost the quality of clinical care.

Each of the top three teams from the event received $20,000 in seed money to continue work on their proposals and develop proofs of concept. Rowan University and the Inspira Health Network Innovation Fund pitched in the seed money.

“Breakthroughs occur at the boundary between disciplines, and that is exactly what the Inspira Innovation Center and the South Jersey Technology Park at Rowan University are hoping to foster,” said Shreekanth Mandayam, Rowan’s vice president of research.

A big congrats and thank you to the winners, participants and planning teams who made @RowanUniversity and @InspiraHN's first partnered event a huge success! 🎉🏆

@SNJToday Coverage: https://t.co/yp2v4kV37J | #HealthHack Winners: https://t.co/tUVJaXT8Dz pic.twitter.com/Q19rGkAwaO

— ResearchAtRowan (@ResearchAtRowan) June 26, 2018

“The energy and creative forces that we witnessed at the Health Hack were the direct result of providing a venue for innovators from many disciplines to work together,” John DiAngelo, president and CEO of Inspira Health Network, said in an emailed statement.

Here are the three winning ideas:

• An Uber-like, volunteer-staffed patient transportation service to increase care access, by Parth Bhavsar, Christopher Lacke, Long Nguyen, Mohammad Rattu, Amar Joshi.
• A portable 3bD fluorescent microscope for quick dermatologic diagnosis, by Ben Wu, Yang Qi, Shengtao Sun, Xiao Hu, Geralyn Paterson.
• Use of patient data to personalize treatment of chronic gastrointestinal disease, by Sangita Phadtare, Joshua DeSipio, Kirti Yenkie, Manuel Pontes, Sarah Graham.

“The best benefit (of this technology) for patients is that they do not miss an appointment,” said Bhavsar, a research assistant professor in the Center for Research and Education in Advanced Transportation Engineering Systems at Rowan University and leader of the team woking on patient transportation. “According to the doctors on our team, this is critically important, especially for patients on dialysis.”