Five Healthcare Hacks at PennApps X
Building patient, doctor, and caregiver apps for a better tomorrow
For PennApps X, we wanted to try something different
We teamed up with dozens of talented doctors, specialists, and healthcare providers at Penn Medicine to create PennApps Health. For the first time, PennApps participants were given a special opportunity and challenge: make hacks that combined innovative technology with current problems in patient care. We gave our health hackers their own venue and mentors, and they produced some of the best hacks we’ve ever seen.
Here’s some of the awesome projects people made at PennApps X Health:
Clayr helps you understand lab results
For the average person, reading a lab test printout is almost impossible. Clayr fixes that by translating numbers and medical abbreviations into plain English and colorful graphs.
Here’s how the Clayr backend works:
The app works by sending images of the lab tests to our Django server (hosted by Microsoft Azure), which then processes the pictures into text and then generates JSON data after doing tests. The app then uses that JSON to synthesize the readable tests and let the user see what’s going on.
But all patients have to do is take a photo of their report. The app does the rest, parsing relevant data, making sense of your numbers, and, most importantly, helping patients stay informed about their own health.
Tranquility combines health-tracking with voice commands
The team behind Tranquility saw an issue with most wellness apps today: data logging and self-reporting is tedious and causing user attrition.
This PennApps X project, in the spirit of hacks like GoogolPlex, opens up Apple’s Siri to a new variety of voice commands. Users can simply tell Tranquility what they ate during the day and the app does the rest, taking your food data and using Mashery’s API to grab nutritional facts.
Tranquility has huge implications for the healthcare app market, opening up a world where apps are no longer limited by time-consuming and complicated functions.
Watch My Step sends for help after falls and accidents
According to the National Safety Council, falls account for more than 8.9 million emergency room visits and over 25,000 fatalities every year. Most affected are the elderly and disabled, and the sustained injuries can be life-altering or fatal, especially if urgent care isn’t receieved in time.
Watch My Step is trying to change that, combining a Pebble watch with a series of text and notification alert systems. The Pebble’s accelerometer detects falls and automatically informs caretakers and loved ones. Watch My Step also features a daily reminder system, helping users stay on top of their medicine schedule and prescription refills. It’s health hacking for a better, newer patient safety net.
idleguard is a game-changing medical notification system
During their stay at a hospital, most patients accumulate a massive paper trail: doctor’s observations, procedure notes, lab tests, prescriptions, and more. The team behind idleguard decided to take and streamline these discharge reports, building an interface that allows patients, doctors, and caregivers to communicate. Talk to your doctor, chart your appoinments, disucss treatment options, and more.
Navigating the health world can be difficult for patients. idleguard tries to make it a little easier.
Hand in Hand builds an anonymous mental health support community
The team behind Hand in Hand wants to build a supportive community for mental health issues, a major topic on Penn’s campus and beyond. The app’s goal is to anonymously match users who want to talk about issues like addiction, anxiety, and depression.
People can even text each other using a proxy mobile phone number, making Hand in Hand one of the first mobile-focused mental health support apps. You can try it out for yourself here.
Thank you for making PennApps awesome
We hope you had as much fun at PennApps X as we did. We’d like extend to a huge thank to all of our hackers, sponsors, volunteers, and mentors, as well as the dozens of Penn Medicine students and doctors that helped us create PennApps Health. We’re excited to see what the future brings.
See you in 2015.
