TAMUhack
The winning team, SafeOR, poses with their prizes (Amazon giftcards) and the Patient Safety Technology Challenge judges.
The winning team, SafeOR, was awarded a $2,000 prize for the “Best of Patient Safety Tech” at Texas A&M University’s “TAMUhack”, the largest student-run hackathon in the region. The students combined their individual skills and experiences to fine-tune their idea over the 48-hour event. The team, Abhitej Arora, Daniel Honrales, Daniel Liu, Kelly Zhou, attend the University of Texas at Dallas According to Daniel Honrales, a third-year computer science student, “our personal experiences with complications in the medical world served as a spark that ignited the idea.” They then leveraged their wide array of technical skills to hone the mechanics of making operating rooms safer.
SafeOR harnesses modern technologies such as computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning to train models to recognize patterns of fatigue and factors that lead to errors. The technology they developed will be able track safety from multiple angles, including eyes for signs of fatigue, voice for effectiveness of communication, and hands for handling of medical instruments. Honrales is excited about the future, “we're all looking forward to the progress made towards patient safety in the future and hopefully see impact made by our ideas with SafeOR.”
The judges were impressed with hackers’ enthusiasm about the opportunity to brainstorm and realize innovative solutions in patient safety. The judges were: Walter Page, a nurse by training and director of Texas A&M’s Mothers, Children and Family Initiative; Max Gerall, founder and CEO of the REACH Project; Pranav Sharma, Texas A&M engineering management masters’ candidate.
The Patient Safety Technology Challenge was thrilled at the increased visibility from the workshop on patient safety. Over 80 students were present for the presentation during which the judges shared the current state of patient safety and avenues for advancement Student engagement was so high the judges stayed for over three hours post-event speaking with teams and fielding questions.
TAMUhack was held at Texas A&M University’s campus in College Station from January 28-29, bringing together over 800 undergraduate students from 24 schools. Over 130 projects – the most ever submitted – were presented by student teams by end of the weekend. A total of ten teams competed for the $2,000 “Best of Patient Safety Tech” prize sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, administered by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, and funded by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. The hackathon was available to all students regardless of experience level, discipline, or background. We were excited about that aspect because we know that crossing disciplinary borders and combining backgrounds can lead to well-designed innovative solutions in patient safety.