Manipal students win COVID-19 hackathon of MIT

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.