On October 10th, Yale students gathered in the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design to participate in Hacking Health @ Yale, a three-day long event aimed at generating technological solutions for pressing issues in healthcare.
Organized by the newly formed Center for Biomedical and Interventional Technology (CBIT), the hackathon was designed to empower students to develop innovative, interdisciplinary solutions to healthcare problems. Participants formed teams to design solutions to various problem pitches, working with design, legal, clinical, and business mentors to assess the viability of their solutions. Students then pitched their solutions to a panel of judges ranging from entrepreneurs to physicians to engineering managers. Projects varied from iPhone apps designed to coordinate insurance payments to improved feeding tubes for surgical patients.
Hacking Health featured a diverse participant population, with teams consisting of undergraduates as well as students at the graduate and professional schools. Dr. Christopher R. Loose, Executive Director of the CBIT, points to this broad participation as a unique Yale advantage in promoting imaginative solutions to health problems. According to Loose, future efforts will focus on leveraging the interdisciplinary niche that Yale has carved out for itself.
Initiatives such as Hacking Health mark a greater focus by Yale towards technological entrepreneurship. Reflecting these recent efforts, Hacking Health participants praised the abundance of funding and mentorship available through resources such as the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and School of Management.