The Health Data Consortium recently attended New York State’s Health Data Code-a-thon, which took place on December 19-20 in Troy, NY. CEO Dwayne Spradlin assisted in the judging of the Code-a-thon apps and provides an overview of the event below.
Imagine you’ve got diabetes and are about to have lunch when a text message pops up on your phone, asking if you’ve eaten your veggies today. Instead of reaching for the cookie, you opt for a small side salad — extra calories averted, blood glucose stabilized.
That text comes from Vera, an app that invites you to enter your age, height and weight, and then lets you know if you’re at risk for diabetes. If you are, it sends text reminders to make smart food choices, exercise regularly and manage your blood glucose.
Vera won the top prize at New York State’s first-ever Health Data Code-a-thon, an overnight coding event hosted by the state’s Department of Health. The event was funded by a grant from the New York State Health Foundation, with additional support provided by Socrata. Vera’s creators — Raymond Jacobson, Olufemi King and Ethan Bond – won $6,000 and will have the chance to develop the app next year at a future competition.
The app has the potential to stem the state’s two biggest health challenges: diabetes and obesity. Like the rest of the nation, New York State is locked in an uphill battle with these chronic conditions. But unlike other states, New York has begun liberating its health data, a move that has the potential to reverse these health problems while helping to reform our complex health care system. For their efforts, New York won the Health Data Consortium’s first Health Data Liberators Award at our Datapalooza last June.
Events like the Health Data Code-a-thon — which was held at the EMPAC Theater on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus on Troy, N.Y. on Dec. 19-20 — showcase what can be done with data to make it work for us. The overnight coding marathon was part of a larger event called NY Innovates, which brought together government IT staff, software and hardware developers, and other health and technology stakeholders for collaborations and conversations about software development tools and techniques.
While the hackers were coding, other attendees at the Code-a-thon had the opportunity to sit in on panel discussions and luminary talks about such topical matters as open health data, diabetes prevention and workplace initiatives to combat diabetes and obesity. As one of the guest speakers, I had the chance to talk about one of my favorite topics: the importance of liberating health data and the critical role data will play in improving health and our health care system. Of course, I knew I was preaching to the proverbial choir, but it was another venue for spreading the word.
At the end of the second day, all eyes were on the presentations by the six teams who had spent 24 hours coding and developing their projects. Team Vera was the clear winner, with an easy-to-use texting app geared to people at greatest risk for developing diabetes.
Second prize went to ActiveSideKicks, a mobile web application that allows users to join groups anonymously or with friends and family, to track their exercise and health stats with the support of group members. Third place went to DOEFANI (Diabetes and Obesity Education using Franchise and Nutrition Information), a web app that helps users find restaurants in their area while providing nutritional information about the foods there and health restaurant inspection data.
The winning teams are now poised to compete in New York State Health Innovation Challenge in 2014 that will hopefully culminate in these products being brought to market. These tools hold great promise in reversing our obesity and diabetes epidemics.
And events like the New York State Health Data Code-a-thon reveal what’s possible when data lands in the hands of smart and capable coders.