Manipal students win COVID-19 hackathon of MIT
Akshatha Kamath, Shubham Rateria and Adri Rajaraman teamed up with experts across the globe to identify problems and provide solutions.
Three students from Manipal Institute of Technology won the MIT COVID-19 Challenge, a hackathon conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Techonology. The three students named Akshatha Kamath, Shubham Rateria and Adri Rajaraman teamed up with Melia Watson, a respiratory therapist at Washington DC, Hsiang Wei Hu, co-founder of Acusense Biomed from Taiwan and Mariane Melo, M.D from UK.
The 'Beat the Pandemic' was a 48-hour virtual event conducted on April 4 starting at 3:30 AM. It was hackathon to identify the most critical problems posed by COVID-19 and arrive at solutions.
The team won its track identified and provided solutions for the problems of - "Who to test and when?" under "How to protect vulnerable population from the effects of COVID-19?"
They narrowed it down to the problem of overcrowded hospitals with inappropriate admissions. They identified that less than 5% of the population under 50 years needs hospitalisation. They came out with a solution to build a tele-health platform for non-contact monitoring of vitas – heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen levels, etc using a phone camera or a web camera.
This would be helpful in preventing doctors and healthcare professional from over exposure.