The Wealth of mHealth
Date posted
24 March 2016
Reading time
16 Minutes
The Wealth of mHealth
This weekend I attended the mHealth hackathon in Belgium with a team of developers: Marek,Matthew, Peter and Stephen. As a group we have a lot of experience with hackathons, myself having competed in Dublin, Liverpool and Barcelona. Generally the format across these types of events is the same, a mix of healthcare and technology professionals get together to pitch ideas, form teams and build a prototype solution. However, this one was a bit different.
The Idea
To kick off the event, the team captains pitched their ideas and afterwards these were hung up around the room. Each participant was given 3 post-it notes to stick on those they would like to help build. The problem we wanted to help solve was medication adherence. This is a huge problem in healthcare with billions lost each year because patients forget to take their medication or simply don't want to continue taking it for other reasons e.g. side effects. Our idea was to build a mobile solution that would:
- Allow a patient to manage their active prescriptions and view details on dosage, possible side effects etc.
- Receive configurable reminders and notifications to take their medication
- Provide an open communication stream with the patient's circle of care