Healthcare hackathons are vital innovation platforms where diverse teams of professionals collaborate intensely to solve pressing healthcare challenges. By fostering cross-disciplinary creativity, these events accelerate the development of novel solutions, from medical devices to software applications. The time-constrained, collaborative nature encourages rapid prototyping and out-of-the-box thinking. Healthcare hackathons empower participants to contribute their expertise, drive forward technological advancements, and ultimately improve patient care by delivering innovative, feasible, and impactful solutions in a condensed time frame. To spread this vision and culture further, we were glad to be back as the co-organizers for MEDATHON 2023 in association with S.P Mandali’s We School Welingkar Education.
MEDATHON 2023 was organized at Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College (GSMC) and King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital after co-organizing the successful and most celebrated event of 2022; MEDATHON 2022 (https://www.micelabs.in/medathon-the-medical-hackathon/).
MEDATHON is a part of CONFLUENCE, an international level Conference that is held annually at Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College (GSMC) and King Edward Memorial (KEM). The perfect amalgamation of technology, medicine, design, and management. Undergraduate students from these areas of expertise came together in multi-disciplinary teams to brainstorm and compete against each other in a limited time frame to come up with the best possible solutions to the most perplexing problems in healthcare. The idea was conceived with a vision to provide a platform for young minds to harness cross-disciplinary collaboration and to build an innovation culture among all. Promoting Healthcare Innovation and Research after all is the ultimate solution towards tackling problems in the Healthcare sector on a grassroots level!
Let us walk through the memory lane to cherish the memories created during MEDATHON 2023 :
The event was held in the timespan of the 8th of August 2023 to the 10th of August.
Day 1 began with a series of talks from various industry experts: Janani Ramesh, Dr. Farzan Ghadially, Dr. Rupesh Ghayar, and Zeenal Punamiya on topics such as Design Thinking in Healthcare, Business Model Integration while Innovation, Sensitization while designing Medical Devices, etc. These sessions were accompanied by a series of ice-breaking activities for the participants to know each other. This helped the participants to form an interdisciplinary team of 3, each comprising a medical, engineering, and management student. We had a total of 8 such teams. To bring a twist and add up to the adrenaline rush, we decided to have an auction of the proposed problem statements. Each team had to bid for a particular problem statement and vouch for it. By the end of the day, each team had a specific unmet clinical need to work on.
Day 2 began with participants putting in their blood and sweat to generate the most user-centric solution for their chosen problem statement by using the process of Design Thinking. From the Medical domain, our Program Manager and Senior Mentors Zeenal Punamiya and Palak Trivedi were present to guide the participants. From the engineering background, we had our Junior Mentor and Biomedical Engineer Er. Shreya Kurumpilai along with Er. Sujit Dadas and Er. Rohit Desai to help participants understand the technicalities of the problems on a grass root level. To understand the essence and core of the problem statement assigned, the teams visited the hospital, met clinicians, patients, and their relatives. This helped them ideate about all the solutions that could possibly exist.
As things heated up, Day 3 arrived in no time and the participants presented their work in front of the panelists hailing from diverse backgrounds. We had Dr. Dashmit Singh from the Medical domain, Dr. Anjali Kumar from Management, Mr. Arun Krishnan, and Mr. Sagar Talele from the Engineering domain.
Let us take a peek through the rigorous journey of all the teams :
- Team Retify.ai: Automated screening and early detection of diabetic retinopathy to facilitate timely ophthalmic intervention vivekbokka21.Wixsite.com/retifyai
- Team Designing DNA: Detecting tumor Margins without frozen section https://nsdeshmukh306.wixsite.com/aptacare
- Team DRP: Early detection of tinnitus attack https://github.com/dhawalc2/Medathon
- Team Ladies of Steel: Ensuring adequate Breastfeeding amongst children of lower socioeconomic background https://rainygoa.wixsite.com/milka
- Team Health Rangers: Monitoring compliance with hand hygiene in healthcare settings https://maneom852.wixsite.com/vision
- Team Medinnovation: Remote monitoring and management of chronic heart failure https://spechealth1.wixsite.com/medinnovate
- Team Trinity: Application of gamification for mental health issues https://www.canva.com/design/DAFrGmRPiaM/ogy8SnlGEuQeNUEv4-t0Tw/view?website#2:trinity
- Team Cure Crafters: Preventing repeated pricks for blood collection in patients with chronic hospital administrations https://yugandhakole.wixsite.com/cbc-monitoring-devic
Team DRP bagged the first prize, followed by Team Designing DNA in the second place and Team Retify.ai secured the third place.
