The first edition of ThingHack: Healthcare – the Internet of Things Hackathon was hosted in Bangalore early this week. IoTBLR – an open community for IoT enthusiasts along with Cisco hosted this two day event here.
The two day healthcare and wellness hackathon was participated by 30 individuals who conceptualised, designed and made prototypes of connected healthcare devices that would benefit the society.
ThingHack received over 150 registrations which were narrowed down to 30 based on their ideas, skill sets and interviews conducted by a panel of technology mentors and experts. The shortlisted participants comprised of students, budding entrepreneurs and corporate employees.
Besides hosting the event, Cisco and IoTBLR brought together the IoT ecosystem of technology experts, IoT champions and domain experts who mentored participants and offered training sessions on various topics. The event also involved various Cisco partners and companies from across the globe such as Madrid-based Carriots and London-based Evrythng who offered their IoT solutions and remote support to the participants through the event.
Unlike most hackathons, ThingHack provided both, hardware and software to the participants that included sensors, kits, development boards, components, medical devices, IoT cloud platforms and hardware tools that helped the developers give shape to their concepts. The other interesting aspect was the presence of 3D printing start-up Fracktal Works who brought their 3D printer that allows the participants to make 3D prototypes of their ideas.
Aimed at promoting collaboration among participants, the event also included a ‘Collaboration Challenge’ that encouraged two teams to collaborate and use their solutions to develop a product.
Smart Insulin pen built by the team of Devanjan Maiti, Chayatan, Manish DM from RV College of Engineering, Bangalore was adjudged the best prototype at the end of the event.
The hackathon was presided over by a panel of mentors that included Dr. Parama Pal – Member, Technical Staff – Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems, Dr Rupesh Shirore – Senior Consultant – Deloitte, Dr Navin Parthasarathy – Practicing Physician, Rajesh Rane – Product Manager, Cisco, Zahir Parkar – Firmware Engineer, Texas Instruments and others.
IoTBLR is an open community of Internet of Things enthusiasts comprising of corporate employees, students and entrepreneurs, and over the last one year has grown to over 2000 members. The IoTBLR community is the ideal partner in Cisco’s efforts to accelerate IoT ecosystem in India to create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals and economies.
“India, especially Bangalore has become a hotbed for innovation over the last few years, largely due to the evolution of a robust start-up ecosystem. From Cisco’s perspective, healthcare is one area that is key to country transformation, and Internet of Things, which is the next wave of internet, will have a large role to play.
Based on the projects we have seen at ThingHack, we believe there’s a lot on offer in terms of innovation that could benefit the consumers and society at large. We are glad to have been associated with this event that has facilitated innovation in a field that impacts all of us and are certain that this is just the beginning,” said Joydeep Bose, Managing Director – Corporate Development, Cisco Asia Pacific & Japan.
