Area's 1st Hackathon focuses on health care - Times Herald-Record
MIDDLETOWN — “I may stop the next Russian hacking attack, who knows?” 15-year-old Mark Santos said Saturday morning, sitting behind a laptop while his peers were likely sleeping in.
Santos, a student at Newburgh’s Excelsior Academy, hopes to learn all he can about coding and application development while he finds a career path.
That’s why he attended the area’s first Hackathon, an opportunity for high school and college students to explore the world of application development, said Heather Brady, project manager for the Hackathon. The event, held at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts in Middletown, was hosted by the Accelerator to create a local buzz around the industry, according to Laurie Villasuso, chief operating officer of the Orange County Industrial Development Agency and the Accelerator.
Santos worked with Excelsior Academy classmate Anthony Grice, 16, to develop a game that fit the event’s theme: health care technology.
Cynthia Marcello, the president of the Hudson Valley chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association, said the changing health care industry has gaps that technology can fill.
Santos and Grice worked with moderators and mentors Malania Wilson, Sean Ciaschi and Nick Clark to help children diagnosed with cancer learn about their illnesses in an engaging, age-appropriate way through a game about fighting cancer cells.
But a programmer must realize what is possible in only a day, Wilson said. On Saturday, a five-level game was a reasonable goal, according to Ciaschi.
While some Hackathons last 24 hours or 48 hours, Marcello said the six-hour day was a “shortened sprint” for the students.
“They’re going to take the idea to the level that they can, recognizing that they don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “It’s really about creating prototypes of ideas.”
Another problem the Hackathon participants tackled on Saturday was the lack of community collaboration in health care, Marcello said.
“The patient doesn’t know what’s available to them. Doctors don’t know necessarily who to refer to because they always use that same person,” Marcello said.
James Cox, 20; Richard Zhunio, 21; and Chintan Tikekar, 22, spent the day developing a web application that organizes doctors, facilities and pharmacies in the Middletown area, allowing consumers to see available options and programs.
Cox said that while the prototype they worked on focused on Middletown, it could be expanded for any region or state.
And although the young students may feel inexperienced, they can address the needs of small businesses and nonprofits, Marcello said.
“Smaller, community-based health organizations can’t afford to pay a lot of money for software that larger companies would develop. These students are primed to develop something at a grassroots level and really help the community at large,” she said.
With about 30 participants for this Hackathon, the Accelerator plans to host another one this year, Brady said.
aspadaro@th-record.com
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