CodeTimer

The Smart Watch application to assist emergency medical professionals in administering high quality cardiac resuscitation

In this blog, I take you through an expedited journey of our team’s weekend at the CodeRed ACEP (American College of Emergency Medical Professionals) Emergency Medial Hackathon. In a matter of two days, sponsors pitched problems, we assembled teams, residents pitched concepts, teams developed those concepts, and we presented prototypes to a panel of judges. I played the business/project managing role. By the end of the weekend we ended up taking home the grand prize.

Lets walk you though the sequence of events.

The team was made up of three residents, one that could code and another that could design, myself, and another business guy. Pretty good balance in team expertise for a hackathon (suggested skill sets for an innovation team), but the clock was ticking and we made it work.

First step, to get the team on the same page was to create a user flow. I have never been a doctor or worked as part of a medical staff. Initially, I had no idea what John wanted (the resident who originally pitched the problem and the concept). All I knew is he wanted to use a smart watch to help doctors with CPR. Sounded like a tall order, but we got to work.

I asked detailed questions to create the current state user experience and the intended user experience.

Above is the messy diagram we came up with and after we went through the tough exercise, everyone understood the process at a high level.

Original User Experience: Person goes into cardiac arrest at home, messages for help, Emergency Medical Professional (EMS) arrives, administers cardiac resuscitation (loop of activity including pulse checking, administering medicine, defibrillating, recording activity takes place), EMS takes patient to hospital, hands over to another doctor

Then we identified the pain points…

Pain Points: (1) Doctors have difficultly keeping track of when to perform activities during cardiac resuscitation (2) They don’t hand over a consistent record of what occurred to the hospital physician (if any record)

Following we discussed our intended user experience

Intended User Experience: Person goes into cardiac arrest at home, messages for help, Emergency Medical Professional (EMS) arrives, turns on CodeTimer via voice activation, administers cardiac resuscitation (with smart watch providing notifications of what activities to do when and recording what took place), takes patient to hospital, hands over to another doctor with an electronic historical record of activity for the doctor.

We then started to prepare our final presentation and decided within the last two hours to make a video prototype of the experience (below).

Prototyping was insanely valuable as it helped us further define the user experience and change nuances to make the experience more natural for doctors.

At the end we developed a prototype video, a buggy smart watch application, an intended business model, and took home the winning prize.

What are the key take-a-ways about hackathons:

(1) Always start with the problem

(2) Define the current state and intended future state

(3) Iterate relentlessly with the team

(4) As the concept becomes clearer, iterate on the business model

(5) Present a clear story to your audience about the problem, how you intend to solve it, and your impact (both to the user and to financially)

Great first jump into the medical arena. Excited for my next Hackathon.