BostonHacks
Mentors (back row, left to right): Ronen Rozenblum and Maggie McGrath and DoseMate Team Members (front row, left to right): Rohan Chablani, Jay Patel, Mohnish Shridhar, and Felix Bagurskas Rubio (photo provided by Boston University)
Boston University hosted its largest, annual student-run hackathon on November 2-3, 2024. The theme of this year’s BostonHacks competition was “Interstellar Innovations.” The competition encouraged participants to contemplate ways they can create solutions that make healthy living accessible and engaging, consider common problems that users face with current products and how BostonHacks participants can solve them, and how ML/AI can be used to improve health-monitoring and medical care for at-risk and high-stress populations.
The Patient Safety Technology Challenge sponsored a prize worth $500 at the competition. DoseMate won Beats Solo 4 Bluetooth Wireless Headphones for their patient safety innovation, which allows users to remain accountable for their medication intake through contact with family members or an emergency contact. DoseMate provides users with an opportunity to connect with their doctors to explain circumstances of medication non-adherence and then communicate to solve the issue at hand. DoseMate team members include Rohan Chablani, Jay Patel, Mohnish Shridhar, and Felix Bagurskas Rubio.
Jay Patel, a sophomore studying Computer Science at BU and a DoseMate team member, said his team decided to compete in the Patient Safety Technology Challenge because they felt their innovation would have the greatest impact, as compared to the other challenges in the hackathon. The team drew inspiration from personal experiences, including elderly relatives who struggle to keep track of their medications. He explained, “our goal was to have the family members of a patient proactively encouraging their loved one to take their medication on time with the correct dosage. This holds the patient accountable and creates a sense of responsibility of not letting their loved ones down by being on top of their medications.”
DoseMate notifies family members and/or a designated emergency contact whenever a user does not comply with their medical instructions. This is meant to encourage users to stay on track with their medication adherence, as team members identified current solutions as insufficient to impact a patient’s medication adherence. They aimed to create a solution that would be accessible to all and that would not be as heavily surveillant as existing solutions. Patel says “DoseMate strikes a perfect balance reducing human error, being accessible to all, and the patient's collected data is only what is necessary.” While the team is proud of what they accomplished at BostonHacks and was excited to win the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, they are not stopping here! Patel said DoseMate will “continue to think of new solutions aimed at solving specific problems in the patient safety domain.”
