Cornell Health Hackathon

Current Care team members working on their project. (Photo Credit: Cornell Health Hackathon)

The 2024 Cornell Health Hackathon was an in-person interdisciplinary event from March 8-10 in New York City that brought together students from across degrees, majors, and schools. Weill Cornell Medicine invited local students and also chartered a bus for students to attend.

Sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge with funding from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, the theme of the event was patient safety. On Friday evening, teams comprised of medical, business, engineering, data science, developers, and design students were formed to begin creating solutions to improve patient safety. On Saturday, mentors provided feedback and guidance to the teams. On Sunday, the hackathon culminated in a project showcase to an audience of peers, mentors, and sponsors. A panel of judges selected winners and awarded $10,000 to five winning teams.

Current Care won the $3,000 Grand Prize for their device to prevent pressure ulcers through electrical muscle stimulation. Team members included: Antranig Baghdassarian, Leah Lackey, Andrew Lee, Brianna Leung, Johnson Liu, and Justin Liu. Leah Lackey, a Cornell PhD student in electrical and computer engineering, shared the inspiration for the project: “The idea originally came from (team member) Brianna Leung to utilize electrical muscle stimulation technology to help prevent bed sores. Our team created a device called the StimSense patch, which sits upon the areas most likely to form a pressure injury and has a silicone covering to prevent future sores. Additionally, it uses a variety of sensors to calculate motion and blood flow, which can notify healthcare professionals if attention is needed, as well as engage a component within the device that creates an electrical stimulation of the muscles. Our device serves to improve patient care and to assist healthcare professionals who are working with many patients at once.”

Johnson Liu, a Cornell sophomore majoring in electrical and computer engineering, shared more details about the inspiration for Current Care. Liu said, “As we conducted further research, we discovered that insurance companies do not cover the costs for pressure ulcers, as they are technically caused by the hospital; hence, the hospital ends up covering the costs. With our device, we aim not only to prevent the formation of pressure ulcers but also to benefit nurses working long shifts, as they would not need to turn the patients over as frequently.”

Team Rocket won the Best Use of AI Prize of $2,500 for their innovation, RocketHealth. Team members included: Sally Zhao, Stephanie Nguyen, An Tran, Khanh Do, Dany Alkurdi, and Ferdinand Gross. RocketHealth is a co-pilot for home health nurses. It works to counter adverse medical effects and provide medication reconciliation and automation.

“We have created an AI Co-Pilot that can support home caring nurses with their workflows,” Ferdinand Gross, a Cornell MBA student, said. “This tool can make their jobs more efficient and increase patient safety at the same time. The winners are the patients who get better care, and the nurses who have an improved work-life balance. The inspiration came from thinking more deeply about the almost superhuman task of being a good nurse. There are many complex interrelated tasks every day, yet there is no margin for error. We wanted to do our part to help the nurses to be more empowered.”

Cedar won the $2,500 Most Innovative Solution Prize for their Portable Ultrasound Imager for Carotid Artery Stenosis. Cedar team members included: Ethan Tse, Claire Zhang, Allen Dinh, Reem, and Danny Nguyen. Team member Claire Zhang, a University of Pennsylvania bioengineering student, explained the team created the portable ultrasound device with care delivery in rural areas in mind. The team leveraged recently developed technology in a wearable ultrasound patch, with the goal of early prevention of stroke.

“I am passionate about making patients' experiences as efficient as possible in the hospital. There is a delicate balance between hospital efficiency and patient safety, and with that in mind, I want to develop medical devices that can make care easier for both patients and physicians,” Zhang said. “Incorporating new technology into medical devices gives us the potential to avoid medical errors and maximize safety and efficiency at the same time.”

Femnostics won the Most Market Ready Prize of $1,500 for addressing female reproductive health issues, specifically vaginal infections. Femnostics team members included: Antonia Li, Urmila Sehrawat, Bhavishya Agarwal, Edward Kim, Justin Xiang, and Rebecca Wang.

Vaginal infections are mostly underdiagnosed by the standard techniques used in clinics which require two to three days to diagnose, leading to delays in appropriate treatment. Team member Urmila Sehrawat, a post-doc in cancer biology and genetics, said: “Femnostics presented a viable, scalable, and much-needed product to accurately diagnose multiple vaginal infections at once. It provides a solution for a faster diagnosis and shortens the waiting period for patients to receive appropriate treatment specific to their infection.”

IPVision won the $500 prize for the project with the most potential impact. Their idea was to transform intimate partner violence (IPV) healthcare by leveraging AI to detect cases and provide personalized treatment in acute care settings. Team members included: Lina Chihoub, Emily Leventhal, Raquel Castromonte, Mariam Rizvi, Elizabeth Madamitola, and Keshika Gopinathan.

Team member Emily Levenathal, a Cornell University healthcare management student, shared more about IPVision: “Our project worked to detect incidences of intimate partner violence in acute care settings. This is an experience many people face, and we wanted to ensure that hospitals are being an active resource to treat and care for these patients well.”