Penn Nursing
Busra Coskun, Belle Hsieh, Monica Lama, Luke Ni, Kevin Song, Victor Wanjohi (from Penn Engineering); Cheryl Wang and Jonathan Zhu (from Penn Nursing).
A $10,000 prize-winning idea topped the competition at the first Smarter Care Datathon, organized by Penn Nursing and Penn Engineering. Team 6 CARE: A Critical-care Acuity & Resource Evaluation Metric, developed by students, earned the top award by creating a solution to better evaluate patient acuity and resource needs.
Nearly seventy students from both schools participated in the Datathon, which was sponsored by the Penn Community Collaboratory for Co-Creation on September 20 in Fagin Hall. Interdisciplinary teams used the MIMIC-IV database, a massive critical care dataset, to develop innovative, data-driven solutions for real-world healthcare challenges.
Teams chose from three key focus areas:
- Documentation and workflow
- Staffing and patient outcomes
- Early prediction of patient outcomes
Throughout the day, students honed their ideas before presenting final pitches to a panel of judges for a chance at a $10,000 prize. The top prize was awarded to Team 6 CARE: A Critical-care Acuity & Resource Evaluation Metric, which developed a solution to help better evaluate patient acuity and resource needs. Team 6 was made up of Busra Coskun, Belle Hsieh, Monica Lama, Luke Ni, Kevin Song, Victor Wanjohi (from Penn Engineering); Cheryl Wang and Jonathan Zhu (from Penn Nursing).
In a show of the event’s collaborative spirit, students also recognized their peers’ work through a peer participation award. This honor went to Team 3 Vocal Voices, further highlighting the creativity and teamwork that defined the day. This team was made up of Xavier Beltran Urbano, Teena Bhatia, Ignacio Boero, Vansh Dalal, Antonio Pariente, Seher Taneja (from Penn Engineering); Hannah Cho and Sean Sygaco (Penn Nursing).
“The inaugural Smarter Care Datathon builds on the long history of collaboration between Penn Nursing and Penn Engineering. This powerful synergy showcases the critical importance of interdisciplinary teamwork in solving complex healthcare challenges,” said George Demiris, PhD, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and Penn Nursing’s Associate Dean for Research and Innovation. “By uniting the clinical expertise of nursing with the innovative problem-solving skills of engineering, we are forging a path toward a healthier, more inclusive future for patient care.”
Planning committee members for the Smarter Care Datathon include Demiris; Patricia Brennan, PhD, Provost’s Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow; Marion Leary, PhD, Director of Innovation; Kathryn Connell, PhD; Ann Muramatsu, Penn4C Outreach Facilitator, all from Penn Nursing; and Mark Yim, PhD, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, from Penn Engineering. During the Datathon challenge, Penn Nursing faculty Liming Huang, PhD, and Jungwon Min, PhD, and postdoctoral student David Yu, PhD, served as mentors for the teams.