IDEA Hacks
IDEA Hacks winner LIFE-line team members (left to right) Junha Park, Camilla Rodrigues, Lucas Ton, and Alexander Pak.
The tenth anniversary of IDEA Hacks, the premier hardware-focused hackathon on the West Coast, was hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Student Branch at UCLA, a professional student-run engineering organization.
The event was held on January 12-14, 2024, and invited students from any college across Southern California to attend – including many local community colleges.
LIFE-line was the winner of the patient safety track, sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge with funding from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiatie. LIFE-line received the $500 prize for their device that detect falls and notifies a registered family member or the local emergency services, depending on the severity of the fall. It has OLED display for text, intended for a speech-to-text implementation to help either overcome language barriers or communication disabilities.
Team members include: Junha Park, Camilla Rodrigues, Alexander Pak, and Lucas Ton.
Rodrigues, a Glendale Community College computer science student, shared, “I had a great time. It was my first time participating of a hackathon… since we were trying to solve a problem of our community (our loved grandparents for example), we decided to develop a device that would contact the emergency in case of a fall.”
Based in Southern California, Patient Safety Technology Challenge Project Manager Ariana Longley was excited to attend the event.
“A majority of the hackathons we’ve sponsored have been software focused. This was a great opportunity to bring hardware engineers into the fold, get beyond web and mobile apps, and see what the electrical engineers could bring to the table,” Longley said.
The Patient Safety Technology Challenge was excited to see teams from IDEA Hacks create solutions to patient safety.