A Hackathon For Children's Health

The student group Bulldog Hacks holds its second hackathon this weekend, this time with a focus on pediatrics. 

There’s still time to sign up for HackPeds, a two-day event at the Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID) dedicated to solving pediatric healthcare challenges. In just 23 hours, participants will pitch pain points, develop solutions in teams, and present their final products to a panel of judges. 

Participants (all must be Yale-affiliated) will compete for four prizes: a $500 Grand Pediatrics prize, a $250 Pediatric Wellness prize, a $250 Innovate Health Yale Health Disparities Reduction prize, and a $100 Best Prototype prize. 

The event kicks off Friday at 7 p.m., and will feature keynote speaker Dr. Benjamin Doolittle, program director of the Combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program. Pain points - areas in pediatric health that need improvements – will be discussed, and teams will be formed. As they work on their ideas, the teams will have access to seven mentors who specialize in various aspects of pediatric medicine.

The event ends at 6 p.m. Saturday. “A lot can happen in 23 hours,” said Claudia See, who founded Bulldog Hacks. The group’s first hackathon last year focused on mental health. This year, See said she got the the idea to focus the event on pediatrics from Medical Device Design, a course she’s taking this year at the CEID. 

Children’s health is an area, she noted, where there is no shortage of issues to address. For instance, about one-third of children are either obese or overweight, 11% of children aged 4 to 17 have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and more than 40% of the deaths of children between the ages 1 and 14 are due to unintentional injuries. 

“We always pick a theme, because it helps participants come up with ideas,” said Sarah Ornellas, marketing director for Bulldog Hacks. “But we also want a theme that’s broad enough that we can go into different aspects.”