Smart Watch App Big Winner at Emergency Medicine Hackathon

CHICAGO – CodeTimer, a smart watch app designed to time chest compressions and prompts paramedics to administer medications to patients suffering cardiac arrest outside the hospital, took the top prize at the American College of Emergency Physicians’ first annual emergency medicine “Hackathon.”  This event—which is part of the ACEP14 annual Scientific Assembly conference—is dedicated to solving emergency medicine problems with technology solutions.

ACEP and the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association teamed up with Hacking Medicine at MIT, Chicago Health 2.0 and Grand Sponsor AllScripts to conduct this 3-day event involving emergency physicians, computer programmers, engineers and other experts to tackle challenges in emergency medicine.
 
CodeTimer’s winning team members who will receive $1,000 are:

• Sergio Marrero, entrepreneur, Masters of Public Policy candidate at Harvard University; 
• John Manning, MD, at Carilion Clinic at Virginia Tech in Virginia;
• Cyrus Yamin, MD, at the University of Cincinnati;
• Nachi Gupta, MD, PhD, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York: and
• Chris Pagano, program coordinator for the SHIP Program at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

The winning idea -- demonstrated in this video -- was the result of team collaboration by clinicians, business developers and programmers aimed at enhancing care for cardiac arrest patients. In addition to the compressions and medication reminders, CodeTimer provides a time-stamped summary of the events in the field for physicians at the emergency department to review when receiving the patient. 
 
The challenges proposed at the Hackathon were patient-doctor communication, paramedicine care, big data, geriatric medicine and real-time location services. CodeTimer was submitted in the paramedicine care challenge.
 
The judging criteria questions included:

• Are they solving problems in emergency medicine?
• How well does the solution solve the problem?
• Will this solution impact the delivery of emergency health care?
• Can the solution be realistically implemented?
• How is it is similar from other solutions that might seem similar?
• Do you believe that it will be used?

About ACEP

ACEP is the national medical specialty society representing emergency medicine. ACEP is committed to advancing emergency care through continuing education, research and public education. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, ACEP has 53 chapters representing each state, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. A Government Services Chapter represents emergency physicians employed by military branches and other government agencies.