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2019 HEALTH HACK COMPETITION
Child Health & Wellness
The 2019 competition collected real world challenges faced by health professionals, patients, and caregivers, then presented them to a pool of aspiring innovators and expert mentors. Next, we facilitated the formation of multidisciplinary teams and supported them as they worked to develop an innovative solution. Teams had 6 weeks to develop their solution design before the Health Hack Weekend, where they had 72 hours to develop a functional prototype that addressed the challenge. On Demo Day, solutions and teams were evaluated by a panel of judges and competed for $35 000 in awards.
Best Overall
Making Mapping Fun
HappyMappers was our way to improve active brain mapping delivered during Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in children with neuromotor disorders. Brain mapping is important as it may have significant impacts on guiding rehabilitation and evaluating treatment interventions. The traditional way these tests were delivered was both boring and inefficient as the child will easily lose focus due to boredom – therefore what should be an hour and a half session is more likely going to extend to three hour sessions.
Our team created the first ever compatible video game interface which allows the child to play a video game using the muscles electrical activity and is adaptable to the clinicians needs. Not only was our goal to improve the experience of children who are getting TMS for brain mapping, but also make tests efficient and reduce cost from one session to the next, by eliminating boredom induced delays.
Best in Category
Family & Community-Centered Care
Inuka Health
Inuka health is an audio-visual app that aims to eliminate communication barriers between healthcare workers and patients who speak different languages. This year we are hoping to start testing our product in local clinics in Calgary starting with 3 languages and then expanding further. We are very excited to be moving forward with our product!
Best in Category
Clinical Research
Examination Mannequin
Team Members: Angela Senevirathna, Arth Trivedi, Ayesha Khan, Elvis Tchetga Njamen, Khorshid Mohammad, Patricia Sharleen, Rizvi Mahmud Ibrahim
Best in Category
Primary Care
Arc Rehab
Team Members: Brianna Tipping, Cynthia Kahl, Kara Sidhu, Laurie Lee, Lewis Stevens, Mina Mina, Tarak Dave, Timothy Chang
Best Pitch
Eczema Baby
Team Members: Alexander Cobban, Andrei Nastase, Dion Kelly, Fernando Mejia, Jaime Martinez, Jian Liao, Kristina Komarek, Nilesh Sharma
People's Choice
KidFlex
​KidFlex sought to bridge the gap between existing cerebral palsy rehab methods and develop a novel all-in-one system with a focus on treating children. An estimated 6 out of every 100, 000 children are affected by paediatric stroke which often leads to the development of hemiplegic cerebral palsy. While affected adults have benefitted from functional electrical stimulation (FES) therapy for years, there was a clear need to tailor treatment towards children.
Our team took advantage of revolutionary brain-computer interface (BCI) technology that measures real-time brain activity and translates ECG readings into computer keystrokes. We modified an existing stimulator device to accept inputs from this system and then designed a BCI-controlled game to keep children engaged during the long therapy sessions. The result was a patient-directed therapy tool that focuses on patient engagement.
