Imagine doctors’ offices where you can go straight into the exam room without filling out long check-in forms.
It might seem impossible, but students at this university and at high schools across the state are working to make quick and easy medical care a reality. Using mobile health technologies, these students hope to not only improve medical visits but also change overall health maintenance for the better.
The Maryland Innovate 4 Health Challenge began last month, aimed at students with the goal of creating a healthier society, said Kenyon Crowley, the deputy director of The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems in the business school.
The competition asks students to work on a solution to manage chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer or mental health disorders. They can also design a solution structured around treating an acute care event, such as surgery, or a major life stage such as pregnancy, or create methods to improve the flow of information between patients and medical providers, according to the press release.
The challenge requires students to use mobile technologies while working on these projects, as new technologies have become increasingly important in health care.
“[We are] aiming to promote industries in Maryland because mobile health in Maryland is an interest in the state,” Crowley said.
Students are in a special position to help incorporate mobile technology into medicine.
“Students today are very tech savvy,” said Brian Gaines, CEO of MdBio Foundation Inc. “[They] understand technology much better than most … older adults may not be as savvy as that.”
Finalists will be announced in April. Competition winners will be announced in June and receive a $2,000 prize, according to the news release.
In this state, health-related public budget spending added up to nearly $10.4 billion, which is about 28 percent of the state budget, according to the state budget highlights for fiscal 2014.
In a recent Forbes Magazine opinion piece, writer Howard Steinberg questioned the effectiveness and hype of mobile health technology by analyzing “lifestyle diseases” which are so common in the country that more than one in three adults are obese. Major causes of obesity are from unhealthy eating habits and behaviors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a result, implementing health apps in the lives of those with unhealthy behaviors is a much bigger challenge for mobile health technology advocates.
But Gaines hopes the students will think outside the box to address these issues and make the solutions more appealing and applicable to everyday life. If not, obesity can lead to other chronic health issues such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. The real-life application of this project lies in the hands, or rather at the fingertips, of those with chronic diseases.
“How do we really marry technology and health care to improve health care for everyone?” Gaines said. “That’s what we are looking for.”
Stephanie Nkatchou, a junior biochemistry major, plans to enter the competition with an app that could better manage the information exchanged between patients and doctors. After surgery, follow-up information such as when and if patients are taking their medicine or taking care of their bodies would be filtered to doctors’ offices so they can better treat patients during recovery, Nckatchou said.
“That app would help with the flow of things,” Nkatchou said. “I want to focus on the technology side of it, and to overall benefit health care.”
Competition guidelines also encourage students to take advantage of robots, Web-enabled technology or wearable devices such as Jawbone products. Across this state, eight or nine high schools have already signed up for the competition, Gaines said.
“This is a real-world challenge we have put in front of students,” he said, “and I think they are really wanting to change the world.”
CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the CEO of MdBio Foundation Inc. as Ben Gaines. His name is Brian Gaines. This article has been updated to reflect this correction.
