MedTech Boston Announces the Winners of the Final Qualifying Round of the Google Glass Challenge

It’s been a really busy two weeks with Boston hosting Healthcare’s Grand Hackfest plus this reporter getting the opportunity to go to Vegas, baby to cover Hospital Medicine 2014, the largest gathering of Hospitalists in the world.

Our Google Glass Challenge hopefuls were busy as well, as we received a deluge of submissions in the third and final qualifying round which ended on March 22, including several that came in literally minutes before the deadline (you know who you are). Given the volume of submissions, our judges took a few extra days to complete their evaluations, but we’re happy to announce the SIX new semi-finalists that will join the seven from the previous two rounds in the Google Glass Challenge Final Showdown! We’re also super excited that this round’s winners include our first medical student semi-finalist!

For a complete list of the semi-finalists, head over to the Official Results Page.

Submissions were judged by a panel of renowned clinicians and technical experts, including the White House Innovation Fellows and MIT H@cking Medicine. Ideas were judged primarily on their clinical impact and practicality.

The Suspense is Killing Me!

Okay, okay…here they are! Semi-finalists are listed in order of their combined total score:

1. Ed Chung, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, New England Market at Tenet Healthcare had the highest combined score for his submission “Code Glass” which proposes using Google Glass to record video and audio of Code Blue responses to augment the post-code documentation which is today based on the written notes of a “scribe” who may have difficulty documenting all of the interventions taken during the code.
2. Todd A. Theman, MD surgical resident in the integrated Harvard Plastic Surgery training program at Harvard Medical School becomes our first and only “repeat” semi-finalist with his submission “GoogleDoc”. Dr. Theman’s submission “Expert on Call” was chosen as a semi-finalist in Round 2. In his Round 3 winning submission, Dr. Theman proposes using Glass to automatically generate the physician’s notes by analyzing the content of the conversation between physician and patient, and to automatically suggest best practices and recommended diagnostics.
3. Matthew Snyder, who is currently pursuing a combined MBA and Master of Biomedical Science degree at the combined Rutgers University/University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey program advanced to the finals with his submission “Google Glass Dictation” which envisions using Google Glass to automatically document all clinical encounters thereby freeing the clinician to focus on the patient rather than having to type notes during the visit.
4. Piyush Gupta, MD, Internal Medicine Resident at Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University clinched a semi-final spot with his idea “Glass On Call”. Dr. Gupta envisions a world without pagers, where physicians are updated in real-time on their Google Glass and “pages” are displayed in order of urgency, replacing the current “send a page for everything” system that wastes so many clinician hours.
5. Lilit Sargsyan, MD, clinical fellow in Pulmonary/Critical Care at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston will be joining her peers in the final showdown with her submission “RemoteGuide: Remote Ultrasound Guidance Powered by Glass”. Dr. Sargsyan proposes using Glass to allow ultrasound experts to guide ultrasound operators in remote locations over the internet.
6. Florence Doo, medical student at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan becomes the first and only medical student to advance to the final showdown with her submission “Foveor – image handling for the operating room”. Florence’s idea is to use Glass to provide an integrated display to surgeons in the OR during procedures so that they don’t have to take their focus away from the patient to view information on multiple screens.

Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas and congratulations to all the winners!

Don’t Miss the Smackdown!

OK, so it’s not exactly a cage match, but the thirteen semi-finalists will be competing for the four top prizes at the Google Glass Challenge: Finalist Presentations & Expert Panel on April 23. Join us at Google’s Boston Headquarters to hear keynotes by Rafael Grossmann, MD, the surgeon who’s pioneering the use of Glass in the OR, Nayan Jain, White House Innovation Fellow and Early Glass Explorer, and Steven Horng, MD, MMSc, FACEP, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Emergency and Informatics Physician. The semi-finalists will present their ideas, we will announce the winners and then we’ll all network over beer, wine and fancy hors d’ouevres!