Uniquely Stanford
Health Hacks with Global Impact—Making Care More Accessible and Affordable
What if there was a low-cost mobile application to automate the diagnosis of cataracts in rural communities—all from a smartphone picture? Or consider the benefits of a monitor for discharged adult sepsis patients that not only collected critical health data but also delivered educational content. Or what about a data-driven platform that delivers personalized doctor recommendations based on a patient’s medical record? Or behavior-centered tele-exercise, the live video platform that gets seniors dancing again, reducing their stress and isolation? These are just some of the innovations created at Stanford’s second annual “health++hackathon” in 2017.
CatSpotter
Cataract Detection
Undiagnosed and unoperated cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world—especially severe in developing countries such as China and India. At our second annual health++hackathon, a multinational team led by a Chinese clinician conceived CatSpotter. It’s a mobile app that offers an easy and integrated way to identify cataracts and refer patients, and helps facilitate telemedicine by automating diagnosis.
From Theory to Practice—New Ideas, New Opportunities
The event brought together 220 engineers, designers, health care professionals, business experts, and international students from China and Japan to Stanford. Participants spent a weekend brainstorming and building solutions for unmet clinical needs in health care affordability and accessibility of care.
Thirty project teams competed for prizes sponsored by Stanford departments and industry partners, creating software, hardware, mechanical, and business model innovations. The solutions ranged from mobile applications to ameliorate pediatric malnutrition in low-resource communities to artificial intelligence-based models to predict peripheral arterial disease from raw accelerometer data.
From theory to practice, the health++hackathon provides a unique opportunity for project-based education, and a way to democratize knowledge so that the next generation of innovators has the tools to tackle the many unmet needs in health care.
The First Center in the World Focused on Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics
What if we could empower patients to monitor their own health? And, using the data they collect, what if we could piece together a picture of human health at the population level? Beyond just a glimpse of the finer details of health and disease, the goal would be to consistently track and actively apply the findings to prevent disease or detect it earlier.
The Stanford Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center (PHIND) is the first in the world focused on precision health and integrated diagnostics, and will play a key role in mobilizing the components needed to advance this new vision of health care.
Dedicated to longitudinal monitoring and improvement of overall human health on a lifelong basis, the center will develop, test, and disseminate the next generation of health care strategies and mechanisms focused on precision health. It will integrate diagnostic information collected from multiple sources both on the body and in one’s home. By studying the fundamental biology underlying early transitions from health to disease and the “fingerprints or biomarkers” (molecules) of health and early disease, the new center aims to fundamentally revolutionize health care, leading to better and more productive lives for individuals.
The center also brings together faculty from all across Stanford for collaboration, and attracts the top scientists and physician-scientists worldwide who are focused on building the future of precision health. A key goal is to not only develop and test the strategies in our own community and hospitals, but to launch a new generation of companies that will help bring the discoveries and inventions at Stanford out for use all over the world.
UNIQUELY STANFORD: FORWARD-THINKING INNOVATION-MINDED
We combine academia, scientific exploration, and health care delivery into a singularly strong entity with unlimited potential to change health care for good. It's part of our DNA—fundamental to who we are as one of the world's leading academic medical centers.