HackMIT
Raising the visibility of medical error is like “telling a lay audience that there is no Santa Claus, because you have to destroy the illusion that health care is safe,” according to Isaac Chua, MD. Dr. Chua, a physician focusing on the intersection of palliative care and patient safety at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, served as a mentor for the HackMIT 2022 Patient Safety Technology Track. HackMIT 2022 was an intensive weekend event held October 1–2 that gathered thousands of students from universities across the world to MIT’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus to creatively tackle an array of problems. The Patient Safety Technology Challenge, with funding support from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, sponsored the Patient Safety Technology Track, which asked teams to think of a Big Idea to tackle a leading cause of harm in health care.
The top team, TL;Dr, focused on reducing medical harms associated with patient handoffs and discharges by creating automation that summarizes medical team notes into a standard format that improves communication within the healthcare team. In addition, the automated system can summarize and translate information from jargon-heavy medical team notes to allow outpatients to better understand their discharge summaries. According to team member Daniel Foley, “While we initially began very broad with our approach, looking at more obvious and commonly thought-of routes attributed to medical error (such as misdiagnosis and malpractice), we eventually managed to narrow our focus down into a more manageable issue that is especially topical given the overwhelmed state of hospitals–burnout and documentation.” The TL;Dr Team hit upon the key pressing dual crisis in patient safety, of both pandemic-related strains on an already overburdened healthcare workforce and health worker retention. Their project would target reducing the effects of burnout for all levels of health workers through a streamlined, tech-enabled documentation process. Patty Dykes, PhD, program director at the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who was a judge for the competition, shared her belief in the idea and hope that it would be realized into reality.
Copy-cast, the next top team, crafted an idea around a technology-enabled exoskeleton that can mirror another person’s hand movements. The health applications include assisting doctors while performing surgeries and serving as a mobility tool to help patients work on motor control.
Rounding out the top three was roaree, a platform for healthcare professionals to collaborate on creating machine-learning solutions to enhance patient care.
Cheralyn McKee, a family nurse practitioner who serves are the director of technology, integration, and analytics at Community Technology Cooperative, provided expertise alongside Dr. Chua as the mentors for teams to bounce ideas and gain valuable industry insights. The teams were judged based on their demonstration of how their idea applies to and solves a pressing patient safety issue. Jeffrey Rothschild, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medicine School, determined the top solutions alongside Patricia Dykes, PhD, associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. HackMIT garnered innovative patient safety technology ideas and successfully increased visibility of the pressing issues of patient safety. We’re excited to see what’s next for the winners.