Mount Sinai hosted its third annual Health Hackathon, an exciting health care innovation competition that ran from Friday, October 19, through Sunday, October 21. Participants included students from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and 12 other academic institutions, plus professionals with a wide range of backgrounds, such as clinical care, business, basic science, engineering, and software development.
They formed 16 teams that worked together over a 48-hour period to create innovative, technology-based solutions to problems in the field of rare diseases.
The winning teams:
Eye Can Do Technology that allows an immobile person to use eye movements to interact with devices in a smart-home environment.
Mango Tango A smartphone app, called Demeter, that helps patients with metabolic disorders track their diet and assess and manage symptoms.
Walk Thru An ambulatory walker with a portable attachment that helps the user get through self-closing doors without letting go of the walker.
“It’s pretty incredible what people can accomplish when they work with like-minded and not like-minded colleagues to create new ventures,” said Janice L. Gabrilove, MD, the James F. Holland, MD Professor of Medicine and Oncological Sciences, and Director, Clinical and Translational Research Education Program, Icahn School of Medicine.
The Health Hackathon is funded by ConduITS, the Institutes for Translational Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, with sponsorship from the software engineering company Persistent Systems. A diverse panel of judges chose three winning teams, which were each awarded a prize of $2,500. These teams, plus a fourth wild-card team, will be invited to participate in an Innovation Showcase sponsored by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners on February 14, 2019, where they will present their pitches to a panel of entrepreneurs.