After 3 years, MIT grand hack, one of the largest healthcare hackathon in the world is back in person. This time it’s held at a new location and I signed up for sustainable health track. When I hear rovena*’s problem pitch, I was shocked and hooked. Rovena is a physician and everyday when she attends a patient, she needs to change a gown. She attends minimum 10. Imagine how many doctors in a hospital times how many hospitals in US alone. The gown is puffy, not fit very well and filled a bag quickly, worse they’re not recycled. Everyday so many bags of gowns are thrown away and they need to be picked up by waste collection service. This further increases the energy consumption and environmental impact. I teamed up with her and a mechanic engineer to work on gown made of bio-degradable material. Later another doctor joined us.
In 2 days, we researched on material, consulted with people with expertise in bio-materials and experience with hospital procurement, we came up a new composite of material which could be shredded on-site to speed up self-dissolving. The material would cost more yet the saving of trash collection could make it price competitive plus the green appeal. How exciting!
We didn’t win, presentation timing was a bit off (3min is incredibly fast and tough) yet I’m very proud of what we’ve done and have enjoyed the fast learning on bio material, hospital process, and presentation skill. I’m also grateful for the mentors and host MIT team who spent the weekend supporting us and all attendees – giving advice and listening to/ suggesting fine-tuning of our practice pitch.
New connection, new possibility to make health more sustainable; sky is not the limit, only imagination and determination!
* name change to protect person’s privacy