DivHacks
MemorAI team members presenting their winning idea.
The Patient Safety Tech Track challenged participants to devise innovative solutions that enhance the quality of care, reduce medical errors, and ensure the well-being of patients at this year’s DivHacks. DivHacks was held at Columbia University on September 23-24. The Patient Safety Technology Challenge, with funding from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative sponsored a $200 prize for the best tech-enabled patient safety solution.
The winner was MemorAIs which is a platform where users can scan the prescription bottle label’s intake directions to generate and download a .ics (iCalendar) file pre-configured with intake frequency, duration, and time information straight to their device. Team members include Nicholas Assaderaghi, Maximo Librandi, Eden Shaveet, and Utkarsh Singh.
Eden Shaveet, a Bridge to Ph.D. Scholar in Columbia’s Computer Science Department, shared her inspiration for MemorAIs:
“My family has had several unfortunate run-ins with medical errors that that left my confidence in our local healthcare system wavering. I struggled with medical mistrust for several years afterward but found my way back through a degree in health informatics. I specifically remember a course I took called Quality and Outcomes that spoke to the importance of quality improvement (QI) and quality assurance (QA) models and stressed that a culture of “blame” discourages people from coming forward when medical errors are made. Only when we all work together to improve processes does real QI/QA happen in the healthcare system. I also did some research under faculty related to medication adherence and was blown away at the impact non-adherence had on long-term health outcomes. I have always struggled with memory-based non-adherence, so proposing and developing a low-barrier outpatient-facing solution like memorAIs was a great way to address a need I recognized in myself and others.”
Utkarsh Singh, a Stony Brook University master’s student, also shared his excitement to take the project to a wider audience.
Thomas Heymann, MBA, the Sepsis Alliance’s CEO, and Benjamin L. Ranard, MD, MSHP, an intensivist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Associate Director for the Center for Patient Safety and Learning Health System Research, served as judges. Freshman Columbia computer science student, Nicholas Assaderaghi shared, “There was a wonderful speaker [Thomas Heymann] who spoke about the preventability and prominence of sepsis who resultantly piqued my interest in the issue of patient safety.”
The Patient Safety Technology Challenge is thrilled to have sparked interest in patient safety and connect industry leaders to future changemakers.