Team Journey wins $15,000 for Best Pitch at D’Youville Healthcare Hackathon

Over the course of 36 hours, over 100 participants broke into teams to develop solutions that addressed the three objectives of the hackathon:

• engage patients
• demystify healthcare technology to enhance patient experience
• address the barriers that patients face when seeking care

Team Journey consisted of two Surgery Plus residents, Brian Quaranto MD and Ashley Levine MD, and four other members with expertise in technology, software and healthcare. The team spent the entire first day writing on white boards, brainstorming, and planning. Brian wanted to build an augmented reality application called HealAR that would help patients and doctors determine if severe wounds were healing properly without the need for the patient to take a trip to a physical location. Ashley wanted to create an application, TrackOR, that would provide better tracking of patients throughout their surgery while allowing their loved ones to see what stage of care they are in. The final plan was a combination of both. Team Journey developed the idea for an end to end micro-service solution that would improve patient experience and optimize healthcare logistics. The first two micro-services of the platform will be TrackOR and HealAR. After hours of discussion and planning, the coders stayed up all night bringing this idea to life.

The next day, the Team met at D’Youville for their pitch. Brian Quaranto MD, delivered a flawless and perfectly timed pitch that won $10,000 for being one of the top three. That following Friday it was announce that Journey would be getting an extra $5,000 for being the best overall.

The Department of Surgery is very proud of Ashley, Brian and their team. Congratulations on your win and best of luck developing your solution!