Solo en 2015 la financiación para nuevas empresas que intersectan la tecnología con la asistencia médica superó los 6,000 millones de dólares, casi el triple que los primeros tres años de la década combinados. La industria médica donde las máquinas de fax todavía eran la norma se ha visto recientemente sacudida por los sensores portátiles, las aplicaciones de los teléfonos inteligentes, los programas de medicina a distancia, entre muchas otras novedades.
“Gran parte de la innovación que estamos viviendo se centra en darle poder a los consumidores, proveedores y contribuyentes para que tomen mejores y más informadas decisiones”, comentó a Univision Noticias Christian Seale, fundador del Startupbootcamp Miami.
The Hacking Medicine initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, for instance, has so far hosted almost 50 such events, teaming up engineers and data scientists with clinicians in 1- or 2-day events that are meant to quickly and iteratively work towards initial solutions to a host of health-care problems.
Among early results is an infant-resuscitation device for use in developing countries. The Ugandan paediatrician who first presented the problem has now taken the device into clinical trials in his country. The MIT initiative has helped to spark similar gatherings in places such as India and Uganda, led by the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Grad student Katarzyna Matlak MID 17 and a team she collaborated with won a Finalist prize for Vitality, a monitoring systemthat aspires to “create the new normal for pediatric hospital care,” at the recent MIT Hacking Medicine 2016 Grand Hack.
Working with an interdisciplinary group of medical industry professionals, theIndustrial Design major made prototypes of two wireless stickies: a foot sticky (above) that measures blood oxygen levels and a chest version for monitoring heart rate and other vital signs. Eliminating the wires currently needed to monitor chronic conditions in children, says Matlak, will reduce false alarms triggered by jostling and improve mother-child bonding.
Thank you Grand Hack team for offering the services of 100+ professionals and experts in the healthcare industry. I mean, they got doctors to take a whole weekend to help a bunch of college kids with ‘pie in the sky’ ideas. Having time with just 6 of those 100+ mentors was an invaluable opportunity that I hope I took full advantage of. Time with these mentors not only evolved our project for the competition but, it also helped out the mentors. The mentors and participants networked, saw how each other worked in teams (aka future job opportunities here and future program participants, etc.), and overall everyone walked away learning or gaining something new.
This competition exposed me to the innovative side of the healthcare industry as a mechanical engineer and opened me up to a community that could aide in bringing my ideas further. Spending the weekend at MIT for Grand Hacks was definitely a spark in my early engineering career and I know it will help me later down the road.
