MIT Hacking Racism Challenge
The mission of MIT Hacking Racism Challenge is to create a space for collaboration among those with diverse backgrounds to dismantle racial injustice in healthcare delivery and address the social determinants of health. Through the various tracks we hope to shine a light on current structures that propagate racism and implement sustainable solutions to promote racial equity. These hackathons are meant to pave the way for more extensive and exhaustive work across all facets of society. In order to build a better tomorrow, we begin our work today.
Role: Co-Founder (2020), Co-Director
wePool.AI
wePool AI provides a computational testing strategy that leverages Artificial Intelligence to predict a subject’s probability of testing positive for COVID-19, and uses it to segment test populations into distinct pools.
Role: Advisor
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Conversation with Darrell M. Gray II, MD, MPH
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Conversation with David Rhew, MD
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Conversation with Gil Addo, MBA
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Kickoff
MIT Hacking Racism Challenge in Healthcare: Engineering Health Equity 2021 – Hack 101 Nuts & Bolts
Veterans Health Administration iEX 2021: Breaking Boundaries: Using Innovation to Advance Health Equity
The Breaking Boundaries: Using Innovation to Advance Health Equity panel takes a look at how innovation can advance health equity and create the conditions in which everyone has an equal opportunity to live longer, healthier lives. On October 13, 2021, hear from innovators who champion health equity by addressing inequalities in their community and within VA.
From the Basement to the Dome – How MIT’s Unique Culture Created a Thriving Entrepreneurial Community
Forbes: How Covid-19 Changed MIT’s Global Hackathon Program And Others For The Better, Forever
Forbes – Michelle Greenwald – September 1, 2021
Engineers often state that constraints foster creativity, and the adage “necessity is the mother of invention” was never more true than after COVID-19 hit. MIT’s healthcare hackathon program, pioneered by MIT Hacking Medicine, was forced to pivot quickly from 100% in person, to 100% virtual on a global level. In the process, lessons were learned that can permanently improve hackathon processes in other sectors.
Freddy Nguyen, Former Co-Director of MIT Hacking Medicine, a physician, scientist, bioengineer, physical chemist, and innovator, who works currently with both MIT and Mount Sinai, shared modifications and improvements to the program design and launch of the MIT COVID-19 Challenge in response to COVID constraints, many of which will endure. Global hackathons across sectors can benefit from his team’s experiments and learnings.
The Catalyzing Innovation Podcast Episode 5 – Freddy Nguyen
A conversation between host Michelle Greenwald and Freddy Nguyen.
Nature Digital Medicine: Rapid crowdsourced innovation for COVID-19 response and economic growth
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected life worldwide. Governments have been faced with the formidable task of implementing public health measures, such as social distancing, quarantines, and lockdowns, while simultaneously supporting a sluggish economy and stimulating research and development (R&D) for the pandemic. Catalyzing bottom-up entrepreneurship is one method to achieve this. Home-grown efforts by citizens wishing to contribute their time and resources to help have sprouted organically, with ideas shared widely on the internet. We outline a framework for structured, crowdsourced innovation that facilitates collaboration to tackle real, contextualized problems. This is exemplified by a series of virtual hackathon events attracting over 9000 applicants from 142 countries and 49 states. A hackathon is an event that convenes diverse individuals to crowdsource solutions around a core set of predetermined challenges in a limited amount of time. A consortium of over 100 partners from across the healthcare spectrum and beyond defined challenges and supported teams after the event, resulting in the continuation of at least 25% of all teams post-event. Grassroots entrepreneurship can stimulate economic growth while contributing to broader R&D efforts to confront public health emergencies.