Brown Hack Health 2016

I attended my first healthcare hackathon at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University with 90 hackers. While there are so many hackathons that highlight coding skills and building projects, this healthcare hack taught me to focus on ideas. Ideas matter.

Purpose Driven Innovation

Special thanks to @johnsculley for an excellent keynote address! #brownhackhealth pic.twitter.com/CSO06bQQTX
— Brown Hack Health (@brownhackhealth) September 17, 2016

Before we start pitching and building prototypes, we had an excellent keynote speech from the previous CEO of Apple--John Sculley. Speaking from his marketing expertise in Pepsi and Apple, John Sculley stressed that we should keep challenging ourselves with big ideas and have a purpose for everything we do. Just like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, great people all have a "noble cause" that drives them to work harder. With such rapid progress of technology, we should be observant, lean forward, and learn from the many failures we would face. Regarding the current health care system, John Sculley pointed out that domain expertise that overlaps healthcare, high tech, and patients are essential to bringing a better life.

Networking

Before the hackathon started, there were networking sessions and so many talented people passionate about health care. My favorite thing about Brown Hack Health is the diversity of conversation we had. With people coming from medicine, design, engineering, business, and computer science, we learn to approach problems in creative ways and focus on human-centered design.

Brainstorming The Prototype

After problem pitching, we formed a team and wrote all the ideas on the whiteboard. The brainstorming process--challenging the proposed solution, asking for mentors' advice, trying to navigate the prototypes--lasted throughout the entire day. Eventually, we come up with a project called Tumor Tagging. Tumor Tagging virtually takes the idea of Facebook tagging and utilize the recognition tool to reading medical records. In addition, we plan to generate enough datasets for machine learning researchers.

Highlights On Special Events

“Engineers that impact industry don’t just have good ideas. They have the ability to sell them” - Barbara Tannenbaum https://t.co/A5gU9bkTyH
— Professional Studies (@Brown_SPS) August 23, 2016

While we are hacking, Prof. Barbara Tannenbaum came and delivered a workshop on Persuasive Communication. Indeed, we can never be too excited for our presentation. To present our best, we should bring out the contagious enthusiasm, target the audience's interest, and always relate to WIIFME (a.k.a. What's in it for me).

Best of 2016 Brown Hack Health

1. MY TEAM.

We have never met before this conference and each comes from a really different background. The conversations made me think in many ways I have never thought of. I am so glad to meet these awesome people! :)

2. Enthusiastic Mentors.

We have mentors on site and on call with backgrounds from medicine to data science. They are so knowledgeable and we can always reach out to them!

3. Brilliant Demos.

Students create healthcare solutions in Hack Health https://t.co/bUyi7nGAO6
— John & Diane Sculley (@johnsculley) September 19, 2016

There are a lot of interesting demos at the final presentation. It is always a pleasure to see innovation going wild!

4. Snacks, Rest, Convenience.

Unlike other hackathons that hack 24-36 hours straight, we actually had time to rest and refresh for the next day.

Bonus : Since this is at Brown, I do not need a lengthy packing list . Instead, I only brought a laptop, a charger, a pen, and notebook along.

5. New Things, New People.

The BEST of hackathon. Need I say more