MakeUC

ManagMed team members pitching to the MakeUC judge, Eric Brandt, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. (Photo Credit: MakeUC)

MakeUC is a hackathon weekend hosted annually at the University of Cincinnati's 1819 Innovation Hub. This year, a $500 prize, sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, funded by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, was given to ManagMed for the best tech-enabled patient safety solution.

Eric Brandt, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, served as judge for the Patient Safety Track. Katy Hildebrant, MakeUC organizer, shared, "A lot of the other sponsor prize categories focused on AI. With the patient safety track, they didn’t have to use AI, so it was a change of pace. Not everyone wants and can use AI so I think that was helpful for hackers and the patient safety track." 

The winning team created ManagMed, a consumer-facing mobile app with a focus on medication safety, designed for patients to use after they visit their doctor. The app would help patients: look up their insurance coverage for new medications and provide suggestions for generic alternatives, set up reminders to take medications based on a scan of their medication labels, alert them about drug-drug interactions, and embed a chatbot with the ability to answer generic health questions.  

ManagMed team member Jeff Edwards, a computer science student at the University of Cincinnati, said, “Doctors are in short supply and customer support telephone lines can never satiate actual demand. Only people that aren't afraid of being nuisances can get most of their questions or needs addressed by phone if they don't mind the workers looking at them with a disgruntled, 'not-this-person’ again look. App automation with chatbot services validated by a system that mitigates any errors (the ideal goal of the app) would address this fundamental problem.”