Coders, builders, designers and students joined Island Health and hospital staff in an effort to promote innovation in health care for the annual Code Hack competition.
From March 8 to 10, the fourth annual “hackathon” was held at Royal Jubilee Hospital where 70 participants collaborated on solutions to a range of health-care challenges and the top three projects were selected by a panel of judges, according to a news release from Island Health.
Team Zero Blindness won the first-place prize of $1,500 and the Peoples Choice award for focusing on preventing blindness among vulnerable and marginalized populations with treatable conditions like diabetic retinopathy.
The project proposed the development of easy-to-use kits that include a Bluetooth-connected headset that scans a patient’s eyes, and the data would be uploaded to an app to specialists for a follow-up.
In second place, Team Fenta-Nil pitched a discrete device that rapidly detects fentanyl in substances, and in third, Team Next proposed wristbands for patients to track updates on their care and wait-times, provided by an app and waiting room screens to improve communications between care providers and patients in emergency departments.
“Working with a diverse group of doctors, allies and even a high school student helped me to see the bigger picture and understand that Fenta-Nil is more than just a handheld device,” said Anthon Shamapto, who attended Code Hack for the second time. “It’s a potential life-saving measure building on the current fentanyl strip detection technology.”
The Island Health innovation lab will offer support to the winning projects through its “equipment and expertise,” noted the release.
“I thought it was fantastic. It was really great to see such an engaged group of people,” said Michelle Weizel, Island Health’s executive medical director for medical and academic affairs. “We’re at a huge precipice of change in health care. Innovation will happen to us, or we’ll be involved in developing it – one or the other, and I think the more involved we are, from the frontline up, the easier the change will be.”
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