One of World’s Largest Health Hackathons
The word “hack” was revived at MIT in the 1950s after nearly a millennia of being out of favor. At the end of last month, the annual MIT Hacking Medicine’s Grand Hack took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attended by hackers from around the world. The mission of this event is to help promote a “health ecosystem” to tackle some of medicine’s biggest problems: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, breast cancer, infection, tuberculosis, malaria, and more.
The MIT Hacking Medicine’s Grand Hack is one of the world’s largest such events and brings together people from a variety of disciplines, thereby promoting cross-disciplinary ideas and projects.
Hack to the Future
One of the projects is a software game, “Death & the Powers,” that posits a future in which people transform their existence into a software system. While this type of project is a very early iteration of what might one day be spectacular – singularity – hackers now are more focused on creating devices to serve chronically ill patients. As illustrated in the graph below, solutions for chronically ill patients are the exception rather than the rule.
This Year’s Winners
For a full list of this year’s winners visit MIT Hacking Medicine. Following are a few of the winners:
- Technology to help prevent trauma for female occupants in motorcycle accidents.
- A Tubal Occlusion that uses ultrasound for a permanent female contraception procedure that is minimally invasive and affordable.
- The PRELT seatbelt to provide enhanced protection for pregnant women.
- Easy Proxy: Software to help people easily complete health care proxies in under 30 seconds.
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