HackGT
Hexlabs Co-directors (left to right): Rhea Dixit and Anna Zhao, and Clarity Team Members (left to right): Shaya Farahmand, Chase Caven, and Kevin Xiang (photo provided by Georgia Tech University)
The 11th anniversary of HackGT, hosted by Georgia Tech University, took place on September 27-29. This year’s theme was “Circus of Inventions” where participants from all over the world were invited to showcase their innovations. It was open to all, regardless of skill level, background, or experience. Participants competed to win prizes from sponsors across the four tracks: AI, data analytics, VR/AR, and charitable causes. Tejas Gururaj, one of the competition’s organizers, said “it’s really cool to see people’s passions” and he “loved seeing everyone so engaged about patient safety.”
The Patient Safety Technology Challenge sponsored a prize worth $1,000 at the competition; teams competed for Windseeker Electric Skateboards. The prize was awarded to Clarity for their tech-enabled patient safety solution. Clarity team members include Chase Caven, Shaya Farahmand, and Kevin Xiang. The team’s innovation is a multi-modal suite that uses audio and visual inputs to detect fatigue in clinicians, thereby reducing the risk of medical error and preventing burnout amongst healthcare professionals.
Clarity team member Kevin Xiang said the inspiration for their project came from a psychology lecture the morning of the Hackathon, in which his teammate Shaya learned about the concept of automaticity, “the tendency for humans to devote less attention to repetitive tasks.” The team then learned about patient safety and medical errors through the Patient Safety Technology Challenge and decided to create a solution to medical errors that result from clinician fatigue since they “noted a link between fatigue and increased effects of automaticity.” Looking towards the future, the team hopes to add saliency maps overlaid onto the video feed, as well as integrating doctor’s notes, email notifications, and scaling their creation.
Read more about HackGT 11 from The Technique, Georgia Tech University’s newspaper
