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Master’s student Emre Yavuz reflects on the highs and lows of taking part in a virtual hackathon \u2013 from designing an app to predict the risk of Dementia to pitching to 16 judges!<\/strong><\/p>\n During lockdown I came across a post about a virtual hackathon called \u2018Code to Care\u2019, focusing on finding sustainable healthtech solutions which was run by Imperial College Business School. Having worked with Virtual Reality for my undergraduate dissertation, I knew there was something I could bring to this event! Through a Zoom speed-dating event during the hackathon, I connected with three other like-minded individuals who were all interested in using mobile technology to help lessen the burden of the lives of those stricken by Dementia.<\/p>\n We had decided to focus creating an app to help predict one\u2019s risk of Dementia and monitor their disease progression, and had just three days to make our final pitch as convincing as possible in just two minutes. Based on the research suggesting a potential correlation between gait patterns and cognitive decline, we felt that focusing our app on the use of gait analysis would be a fruitful venture.<\/p>\n Ideally our app would be able to predict one\u2019s risk of developing Dementia, monitor the progression of the disease, and identify the subtype of the disease, all by passively monitoring the participants gait using an Artificial-Intelligence (AI) based algorithm. The data from our app would then be relayed to clinicians who could then use this information. However, this end goal seemed more and more impossible to achieve as time went on. Our first mentorship session was with Clive Flashman, the Director of Strategy for ORCHA Health. Clive\u2019s advice gave us the understanding for who we might have to partner with to make our idea a success, and what they could do to help us. He explained the regulatory issues that entrepreneurs face when trying to sell into the NHS and gave us his ideas of how these might be mitigated. He was very supportive both during and after the hackathon process.<\/p>\n We then had a mentorship with Ram Rajaraman, an Entrepreneur who is the Founder and CEO of CHAI Analytics, an AI start-up, who advised on making sure we had thought carefully enough about our business marketing strategy and how we were going to gain appropriate investment in our app \u00ad\u2013 aspects we had barely thought about before the session. Following these sessions, we worked very hard over a period of 24 hours to ensure we had incorporated all of these suggestions into our pitch. After submitting our pitch to the Hackathon team, we waited anxiously for the results. At midnight, I received a message saying that we had made it through to the final five teams out of a total of 34. I couldn\u2019t believe my eyes! We had just 24 hours to make a now three-minute pitch flawless if we wanted to have any chance of winning the hackathon\u2026<\/p>\n We were the first team to pitch to 16 judges. After an adrenaline-pumping three-minutes, the worst part of the experience had arrived: questions. Many of the judges questioned our idea, arguing that we had not discussed how our app would distinguish between those with Dementia and other walking disorders, how it would distinguish leg movements from other movements such as the hands and how those with Dementia would remember to use the app itself. One judge even told us that there was no clear evidence that gait could be used as a biomarker for Dementia disease progression. Had we gone down completely the wrong path? How could our idea have any possible chance of reaching the market?<\/p>\n
\nNot an easy journey<\/h2>\n
Mentorship is key<\/h2>\n
Pitch day had arrived<\/h2>\n