MIT Hacking Medicine is much in demand as hospitals look for new ways to solve long-standing problems with a diverse group of brainstormers keen to share ideas. A few weeks ago it hosted a session at the BIO conference and even as I caught up with co-director Andrea Ippolito after her keynote at CONVERGE, she is gearing up for a business trip to India and has a long list of hackathons lined up this fall.
I’ll bet she wishes she could clone herself. Oddly enough, the organization is moving in that direction.
It is working on a website that would package its hacking medicine model to make it available to a wider audience. Although it typically works with hospitals, it has been approached by companies, institutions and organizations such as AARP, big pharma, medical device companies and surgical groups.
“I’ve gotten such a tremendous amount out of running medical hackathons, but we want this medical hackathon model to scale and to be sustainable,” said Ippolito.
This fall, the organization has an exciting schedule advancing its hacking medicine model. Its calendar includes a collaboration with the Clinton Foundation on a hackathon for women’s health. It will be limited to female participants who are engineers, entrepreneurs, clinicians and designers to promote STEM.
A critical care data hackathon at Beth Israel Deaconess will bring together data scientists and clinicians to analyze de-identified data on ICU patients pulled from electronic medical records by the hospital that could lead to new practice guidelines.
It has a second hackathon with Boston Children’s Hospital to develop innovative ideas in the pediatric space. It’s also doing a Shark Tank challenge at Brigham Women’s Hospital that will look at ways to improve the in-patient experience as its theme.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Emergency department physicians are embracing the hackathon trend, too. MIT Hacking Medicine is doing a hackathon in Chicago with the American College of Emergency Physicians and Health 2.0.
Other projects it is eyeing include a medical hackathon for pain points in behavioral health and collaborations with surgeons.
