App wins Sustainable IT prize
Winning HooHacks application analyzes environmental data for use in the medical field
March 11, 2019
Two college students have developed an application to monitor environmental conditions, such as air and water quality, to help reduce wasted resources within the medical field.
The application, Data Alert, was recognized during the annual HooHacks event (formerly HackUVA) in the best health application category as well as the project that best demonstrates sustainability in IT, which included a $500 prize sponsored by the UVA Committee on Sustainability’s Sustainable IT Working Group.
During the March 2-3 event, students had 24 hours to create a software or hardware project (such as a web or mobile application) from scratch. Data Alert – created by electrical engineering majors Emily Flynn, who attends UVA, and Colleen Foley, who attends Virginia Commonwealth University – is an alert system that provides environmental data to hospitals and clinics around the globe. The system is designed to pull environmental data (such as temperature and air and water quality figures) from online open-source websites and send it to doctors based on their geographic location. This data can then be used when diagnosing patients with symptoms that may have been caused by certain environmental factors.
A user of the system would receive alerts that may say, for example, “higher concentration of carbon monoxide at this location,” explained Colleen Foley. “This makes diagnosing patients a faster process and takes up less resources,” she said. The system can also help identify the origin of environmental dangers (such as hazardous waste or chemical leaks) and assist with analysis of trends overtime such as temperature changes.
“What impressed me about the project is that I thought it was a very clever combination of different aspects of sustainability: environmental quality, health and wellness and reducing waste,” said Facilities Management Technology Officer Chris Smeds, who serves as co-chair of the University’s Sustainable IT Working Group along with UVA student Julia Conte. The two served as judges for the best sustainability application prize.
Future plans for the application include the incorporation of a sensor unit that can capture the environmental data itself, according to Colleen, who developed the design of a sensor unit that uses repurposed cell phones at a previous competition. “I would love to see the combination of my hardware unit and this software because I truly believe it can change the world for the better,” she said.
Jane Centofante
Communications senior generalist
UVA Facilities Management
(434) 982-5846
janecentofante@virginia.edu