Imagine an app that would help people find a new medical provider with whom they could actually get an appointment?
Or a device that would protect patients from iatrogenic infections carried by dirty stethoscopes?
They were among the innovations proposed by Yale Department of Psychiatry affiliates who participated in two recent hackathons in New Haven.
Hackathons bring together people of broad backgrounds, such as computer experts, clinicians, engineers, and business people, to devise solutions to problems that face a particular industry – in this case healthcare and mental health.
The Hack The Brain hackathon February 5 and 6 and the three-day CBIT-YNHHS Healthcare Hackathon on January 22-24 saw several Yale Psychiatry members work in teams to propose innovations in healthcare.
Adina Bianchi, research assistant at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit’s Belief, Learning & Memory Lab, and Seth Powsner, MD, professor of psychiatry and of emergency medicine, and director of the Crisis Intervention Unit, were members of the team Connect Right which tied for first place.
Powsner and Dora Wang, who received her MD from Yale, and is now an associate professor at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, collaborated on the team Protectoscope, which was recognized for “Most Creative Use of Resources” at the CBIT-YNHHS Healthcare Hackathon.
The proposed projects were fantastic, and included products/services that emphasized broader access to mental healthcare, virtual reality and police empathy, cultural integration, and interpersonal skills technology for autism.
Luming Li, MD, PGY-2, Yale Department of Psychiatry
Other Yale Psychiatry affiliates involved in Hack the Brain were Luming Li, MD, PGY-2, who was a mentor; Alex Kwan, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, who was a mentor; Seth Feuerstein, MD, JD, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, who was opening speaker; and Thomas Styron, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, who was a judge.
Feuerstein also was a judge for the CBIT-YNHHS Healthcare Hackathon.
The Connect Right team proposed a website and app to help patients find medical providers who would make appointments for new patients. The team determined that provider lists posted by insurance companies often contain incomplete or inaccurate information. Connect Right proposed to use feedback from people who attempted to make appointments to filter publicly available databases, which the team said would reduce the number of wasted phone calls patients make.
The Protectoscope team proposed a new medical device – the protectoscope – that would shield patients from iatrogenic infections carried by dirty stethoscopes. Protectoscope would dispense quick-stick, disposable covers from wall dispensers next to hospital hand sanitizer dispensers. The working prototype was made from recycled shipping cartons and packing material from the hospital basement, duct tape and a spare stethoscope.
Hack the Brain, hosted at the Yale Center for Engineering, Innovation, and Design, brought together people from many disciplines, including undergraduates, psychology graduate students, internal medicine residents, PA students, psychiatrists, recovery-oriented specialists, and entrepreneurs, Li said.
“The proposed projects were fantastic, and included products/services that emphasized broader access to mental healthcare, virtual reality and police empathy, cultural integration, and interpersonal skills technology for autism,” Li said. “As a mentor, I was impressed with the quality of ideas and was thrilled to see that people from the community were working together to tackle very challenging problems in mental health. My role was to provide guidance to the teams and answer any questions they had while working on their projects. Mentors help explain problems seen in the field and guide teams toward real solutions for those problems. Needless to say, it was an incredible opportunity!”