New Patient Safety Technology Winners Announced in December

The Hack the Nest winning team with judge Ralph Johnson (right).

The Patient Safety Technology Challenge announced the winners of Hack the Nest and OSF Healthcare's Patient Safety Technology Trailblazer, sponsored events that took place this month.

Hack the Nest, the DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) area's largest high school hackathon, was held on December 9-10 in Sterling, Virginia. HealMate Pro won the $500 prize for the best patient safety project. The team was inspired by the workshop on patient safety, that was presented by Ralph Johnson who also served as a mentor and judge. Johnson is the Vice President of Informatics and Technology at The Leapfrog Group and serves on Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative's 's Patient Safety Technology Challenge Advisory Board. HealthMate Pro aims to help monitor patients at the bedside by tracking patient movements to visualize and report potential issues in real time.

The Patient Safety Technology Trailblazer competition, hosted by OSF Healthcare, a nonprofit Catholic healthcare organization that operates 15 hospitals and other facilities in Illinois and Michigan, picked the winning team to receive $10,000 in December.

The competition invited University of Illinois College of Medicine medical students and OSF residents and fellows to submit ideas about how they can leverage technology, such as: AI, augmented reality, virtual reality, and robotics, to reduce medical errors that harm patients. The winning project was "The New Pill Box: How Artificial Intelligence Can Increase Patient Understanding and Adherence of Their Medications."

Congratulations to the winning teams and thank you to the organizers of the events for including the issue of patient safety as an option for innovators and entrepreneurs to address with their solutions. Read about past competitions involved in the Patient Safety Technology Challenge at the Patient Safety Technology Challenge website.