Apple’s watch dominated headlines last week. At the PennApps hackathon over the weekend, one team demonstrated that healthcare applications arising from wearable hacks can excite interest. The healthcare apps, wearables and devices developed in the technology laboratory through a national gathering of university students yielded some interesting takes on how to motivate and produce healthier behavior. Some used what seemed like punishment techniques to change behavior. Others used technology from sponsors such as IBM, Intel, Jawbone and others to go beyond the expected.
As hackathons go, few teams produce technology that will become the heart of a company. But they often highlight the potential healthcare applications from the companies producing the building blocks of mobile and Web-based apps.
Watch My Step used technology based on a Pebble watch to move beyond the wearable popularized by Life Alert decades ago. In this case, it offered a setting on the watch that transmits an alert to caregivers when the owner falls. It also gave a 10 second countdown for users to click yes or no on whether they could get up after the fall. Geolocation is a big part of the app. It relies on Google Map’s API to inform caretakers of where the fall took place. The team received a $500 prize from Epic,
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Body Sense The team sought to move beyond concussion detectors and highlight hard hits to other parts of the body, particularly the torso through a shirt embedded with sensors. A member of the team had a wearable pad that resembled plastic body armor. Whenever someone touched his chest, it triggered a light lit up. The idea, said one team member, is to make the sensors sensitive enough so that it recognizes the difference between a moderate and heavy hit. The team’s focus emerged from conversations with med school students that many sports injuries are misdiagnosed because doctors are not informed of where the force of impact took place.
Scolio It seems like we’re establishing a certain comfort level with pre-diagnosis apps. They capture the urgency and emotion of a warning of a potential medical condition with the comfort zone of not making any claims of medical accuracy. Scolio take another step in that direction with a platform to encourage earlier intervention for scoliosis, a condition that involves a curvature of the spine. The team developed an app that evaluates posture and uses a set of metric that compares the position of the hips with the shoulders. It also factors in back pain, headaches and leg pain. Although it is not designed to diagnose scoliosis, it is intended to alert people to the symptoms in the hopes they’ll seek medical help.
Quitli Maybe it was an inevitable — a wearable that highlights bad health and fitness habits. It’s a cross between a nagging parent and drill sergeant. A team that pitched its wearable as a “Fitbit for sh*t you’d like to quit,” developed the device to record when users smoke, crack their knuckles, use an elevator rather than stairs, and are too sedentary. The device uses accelerometrics to spot less than stellar health and fitness practices — it even is designed to notify users when they slouch or stay up too late. It also notes when users shop at a store they have blacklisted. Although on judge suggested it’s like asking users to hang a scarlet letter around their necks, much of the discipline is self directed. The company came in third place overall in the app tournament.
FitFactor was another team that used a mix of positive and negative consequences for reaching daily fitness goals (or failing to reach them). Users enter their favorite entertainment websites such as Netflix or Facebook and access to them is blocked until they have achieved their goals.
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Third Eye developed a way to use Google Glass to help some of the estimated 7 million who are legally blind give an audio read of what’s in front of them. For example, it could distinguish between a dollar bill and a $20 bill. The idea is to make people more independent.
