HooHacks

Dr. Justin Glasgow facilitating the workshop on patient safety.

Held October 14 at the University of Virginia, HooHacks was an 8-hour ideathon which included a patient safety track, sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge with funding from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative. A workshop was also held as part of the event to raise awareness of patient safety and highlight pressing patient safety issues. Justin Glasgow, MD, MS, Quality and Performance Improvement Hospitalist at Elevance Health served as the workshop facilitator, mentor, and judge for the patient safety track.

The best patient safety idea, Inferomics, was awarded $500. Inferomics team members include Nathaniel Ribeiro, William Kaiser, Gabriela Turriago-Lopez, and Feng Guo. They created a data insight platform that uses models trained on medical data to improve diagnosis.

The team’s solution combines machine learning and pathologist input to reduce misdiagnosis rates. The team cited a recent Harvard Medical School study that showed the success rate of the machine-learning method had a 92% accuracy rate, compared to the 96% accuracy of the human pathologist. When combine, the accuracy rate was 99.5%.

Inferomics is a platform that connects data scientists and healthcare workers through an accessible website. It enables pathologists to easily get second opinions and improve diagnosis. Read more about the competition and the Patient Safety Track in UVA’s Cavalier Daily coverage here.