The Video

Owing to the passionate actors of our project team, we proudly present the VIDEO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ILARloH4I

Enjoy!

2nd Place!

Congratulations to GluBalloon on taking second place in the Health and Wellness 2012 competition!  BEST TEAM EVER!

Jamie works on Bluetooth integration

Jamie working hard to develop bluetooth communication between Collaborhythm and the insulin pen.

Our Team

Here is a photo of our group, hard at work before the final day!

10 days examining diabetes

This week at the Health and Wellness Event 2012 has been educational,  inspiring, frustrating, irritating, and rewarding.  The purpose of the event was to hack a solution to health related problem in 10 days.  I didn’t know quite what to expect.  I was excited about the idea of developing a health care solution in such a short time; however, I was very worried about whether I would be able to contribute.  You see, I had expected to graduate in December. Therefore, I am aiming to finish running experiments and writing up my dissertion in the next 40 days. I seriously considered not attending, but thought I might not get such an opportunity again, so I took it.

The first day far exceed my expectations. Each group consisted of students, academics, and industry leaders from a wide array of backgrounds.  Our group alone had employees from Motorola, Best Buy, Comcast and Humana and students from MIT, Harvard, UMBC, and even the Austrian Institute of Technology.  People had backgrounds ranging from human computer interaction, computer graphics, computer science, medical informatics, design, biochemistry, engineering, and business. Other groups had medical doctors, card designers, and graphical artists.  Each group presented a 10 minute presentation on the problem they were trying to solve and the solution that they were attempting to implement in the next 10 days.  Then the entire room brainstormed for 10 minutes on other possible solutions. Finally, the group gathered possible alternative creative solutions from the other groups in the room for 20-30 minutes.  At the end of the day, I was motivated and inspired by the ideas and the energy in the room.

The following two days were filled with the task of deciding what we were going to do and who was going to do what.  The frustration began.  The group split in two- those who could program and those who couldn’t.

Prior to coming to this event, I had no idea what diabetes was about.  I had one friend in college who ran track that pricked her finger after every workout to measure her glucose levels.  I imagined that diabetes was a huge pain, but I never imagined the dire consequences of not doing so.  In these days, group members watched videos about a day in the life of a diabetic, interviewed a diabetic, and read about diabetes to better inform the programmers about product design.  After hearing the group talk about their findings and interviewing a diabetic, my understanding of the disease magnified.  I gained a new respect for anyone who has the disease because having to balance your exercise, food intake, and insulin levels throughout your day  is a cumbersome and life-threatening nuisance, which I do not believe I could cope with for a life time.

This new gained knowledge motivated everyone to dvelop  Gluballon – a novel interface for integrating your fitness data from a MOTOACTV fitness tracker, a wireless insulin pen, and food tracking app. This is where the frustration and irritation began.  Coding by its very nature requires patience and as I have a dissertation to write, mine ran out rather quickly.  It soon became evident to me that I would not be able to accomplish what was asked of me. This is where the teamwork kicked in.  A young women who flew all the way from Austria for the event  stepped up and took over my load.  We were also fortunate that one of our company sponsors, who was a graphics developer in another life, arrived that afternoon right at the time that I made my announcement.   He was very supportive and encouraging in the face of my feelings of failure.

As days went by, it turned out that everyone on our team was extremely busy.  Getting 10 poeple together to work 10 days to develop a product is simply complicated, especially if you have high achieving, dynamic individuals.  So I will gloss over the frustration and irratation that occurred over the next few days and focus on the team building instead.

Have I mentioned the word VEGAN yet?  A description of our experience would not be complete if I didn’t mention that word.  Our team consisted of three vegans and so for the past 10 days, we have had vegan chinese food, vegan pizza, vegan cheese cake (don’t recommend), and some vegan mush (can’t remember what it was called). I have to say I have been rather surprised at how good some vegan food is.  Bonding definitely occurs over any meal… no matter how healthy it is 😉

Tonight is the last night before the big competition.  There has not been one day that the entire team has been together since the first day. Tonight 9 out 10 of us are in the buidling together.  We are all working on different aspects of the project that we have to present tomorrow.

It has been an invaluable experience.  The group has managed to reach our goal.  We have a functional demo that logs data from a MOTOACTV fitness device, a food logging app,  glucose and insulin levels automatically.  This data is stored in an Indivo personal health record.  Our tablet and the MOTOACTV fitness device can extract this information, so that the patients can view their historical information and a picture of their current state to make better choices about their exercise and food intake for the future.

The demos are tomorrow, Friday, January 27th,  between 1pm and 4 pm on the 6th floor of the Media Lab.  Come join us!

3D printing model of the insulin dose tracker

Here, we have a 3D rendering of our dose tracker that we will be printing tomorrowif all goes well. The goal is to have a form-fitting attachment for multi-use disposable pens to automatically keep track of insulin dosing.