Find more videos from Hacking Medicine Madrid on the M+Visión YouTube channel.

Hacking Medicine Madrid, a collaboration between MIT and M+Visión, brought together novice and seasoned biomedical technology innovators to jumpstart initiatives to impact healthcare in a two-day hack-a-thon. The goal of the brief but intense hack-a-thon format was to facilitate flashes of insight that can spark innovative solutions. In just 45 hours from July 25-27, a diverse and energized crowd pitched important unmet medical needs to address, and demonstrated creative improvised solutions, or “hacks.” The prospect of contributing directly to disruptive healthcare solutions drew innovators from many sectors, institutions, and Spanish regions, expanding the M+Visión’s network.

In the multidisciplinary spirit of M+Visión, computer engineers collaborated with physicians, medical professionals, biologists, chemists, designers, and entrepreneurs. M+Visión Fellows, representing 2011, 2012 and 2013 cohorts, also participated. In addition, the hackers were supported by M+Visión faculty and other mentors who visited project teams, giving guidance on their project ideas. M+Visión Consortium Co-Director Julio Mayol and entrepreneur Stanley Lapidus spoke about the urgency and challenges of biomedical technology innovation. Judges Paloma Cabello, Robert Padera and Tim Harper determined first, second and third place winners, and made special mention of many other successful aspects of the demos.

The hack-a-thon kicked off with a social event on Thursday the 25th and the opening address by Mr Lapidus. The next day, the hack-a-thon began in earnest with 30 pitches about unmet medical and health care needs. Rapid iterations propelled the teams towards novel and possibly disruptive healthcare solutions. University of Melbourne Professor Fernando Martín Sanchez said of his team’s experience, “we came up with a good idea, we have been working together with people with clinical and technical backgrounds, and I think there are many opportunities for innovation and doing things differently in medicine.”

17 demos emerged by the end of day three: Back Track, BeAnotherLab (two demos), Digital Allergy, Good Posture, Instamedi, MediCAPTCHA, Mitral Adaptor, PreChecker, Sleep-o-meter, Smart Pill Box, Stroke Care, Taste Test, Transformer High-heels, Transparent Dental Care, Virtual Reality, and Glucometry.

Tim Harper, hack-a-thon judge, entrepreneur, and M+Visión Faculty, summed up the pace of accomplishment at the event. “We’ve got about 17 teams here, covering all kinds of medical innovation, and they started from scratch yesterday morning and this afternoon they’re going to be doing demos. Things don’t get any better than that.”

The accelerated format of the hack-a-thon won over skeptics, like 2011 Fellow German Gonzalez Serrano.

“You can condense everything you’ve learned into a very intense sharp movement in just two days. Things can happen in two days, which I was very skeptical [about] at the beginning, but actually I can see that this may be a very good idea. Amazing things are happening.”

Said Peter Bryant, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the IE Business school and M+Vision Faculty, “Often being fast actually pays out. It’s a good thing to do and that’s what hacking is all about.”

The winners

1^st Place: Sleep-o-Meter

Home-based sleep apnea diagnosis

Daniel Jiménez Carretero, Néstor Montesdeoca, Joaquín López Herráiz*, Soledad Betanzos-Lara*, Carlos Castro González*, Luca Giancardo*

2^nd Place: Transparent Dental Care

Providing uninsured patients with quality dental care at an affordable price

Juan González, Jie Luo*, Ryan L. Coe*

3^rd Place: Smart Pill Box

Improving medication compliance by means of a smart pill box that notifies the patient at the correct time and monitors compliance.

“Taste Test”

Improving medication compliance through flavored pills, Taste Test is a kind of “checksum” for medication. Targeted at antibiotics and psychological drugs.

Dario Salvi, Javier Sáenz Medina, Nilo Carrón, Cristina Lois Gómez*, Esra Abaci Turk*, Ian Butterworth*

Other demos

*M+Visión Fellow