Philly Hacks Cancer: 4 projects that take on cancer

“Let me know if you need anything.”

That well-intentioned but vague offer of help inspired the winning concept at Philly Hacks Cancer, a hackathon hosted by Center City design firm Electronic Ink. The team created an app concept named WalkThru, which aligns people in need of specific help with those who are willing and available to provide that type of help. Team members included Jon Billett, Jon Wear, Mike Tannenbaum, Sari Widman and Sebastien Derenoncourt.

Below, find the other projects created at the hackathon.

• One team took a similar approach to WalkThru, building a prototype for an app to allow those living with cancer to request help from their communities.
• One team designed a concept for a web application that would provide people with the ability to build a profile page that would feed int existing social media outlets.
• One team was inspired by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s existing recipe app. The team enhanced the features by building a prototype that allowed people to search for recipes based on multiple symptoms (e.g., nausea and loss of appetite), where Dana-Farber only allows single symptom searches.

Judges included Tina Starkey from the American Cancer Society, Caroline Tiger, Senior Content Strategist at Bresslergroup and Jay Harlow, Chief Design Officer & co-founder of Perka, a New York City and Portland, Ore.-based mobile loyalty platform.