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.