3 Teams Pitch Their Way to BELTRAIDE’s Business Hackathon 2018
BELTRAIDE held the final pitch for its Business Hackathon today in Belize City. Three four-member teams of I.C.T. professionals and students are the finalists having competed against other teams to present a solution to a problem that people experience in their daily lives. The problem they are hoping to solve is how to use technology and communication to improve the public’s experience with access to health care. Today, News Five stopped in at BTEC to find out how the youth are proposing to solve this issue. Reporter Andrea Polanco tells us more.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
A group of young people believe they have the solutions to better connect the public to medical services. These youth, made of up three teams, are the finalists in BELTRAIDE’s Business Hackathon. It is a platform created by BELTRAIDE to bring together Information and Communication Technology professionals, including students, to solve a problem –they want to make medical services more accessible to the public. Today the three finalist teams are each presenting a final pitch.
Tomas Gongora
Tomas Gongora, Senior Marketing Officer, BELTRAIDE
“The teams are required to not only prove to us that they can help solve the problem that we presented to them in what is called a problem statement, but they also have to come prepared with a PowerPoint presentation or any other slide presentation; a video pitch which is basically an ad introducing their product and a working prototype. So, it is how can you connect John Q Public to hospitals, pharmacies, private clinics, doctors and other health care based providers. These teams had to go and come up with innovative ideas so that they would stand out from the crowd and prove to us that they can make it work, make it profitable and possibly make this a realistic business in the near future.”
A team from the Corozal Junior College wants to develop a mobile app to help improve customer experience in the health care industry.
Cynthia Najarro
Cynthia Najarro, LXJ Code
“Our solution was to develop a mobile app and a back end web based software where doctors and the general populace can have quick access to different service and communicate through this platform and have an easier access to all the services that the healthcare industry has to provide. And so our solution is the mobile app which is user friendly for the general populace and then the back end where doctors can sign up and have all their information and they can easily give out prescriptions and even the general populace can make out appointments through this platform. They don’t have to go physically to certain places to the actual clinic or their office to make an appointment. Also, when it comes to prescriptions you can easily find your medication through the app. You can know which pharmacies have your medication without going from pharmacy to pharmacy. It is time consuming having to track down your medication. With this platform it can be done in a matter of seconds.”
The other two teams also came up with innovative ideas – using different mediums to bring the different aspects healthcare together so that you can easily access the services.
Jai Chawla
Jai Chawla, 501 Health
“Looking at the same concept of, ‘Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,’ it was that an emergency button would be really useful if you are in an emergency, whether it be fire, police or health and you don’t know how to reach the service, this would be good for any tourist which are coming in or anyone from the public who doesn’t have a number for the operator or a number for the ambulance or with the click of a button you can call BERT and your location will be sent to sent to BERT at the same time. So, in the event that you fall unconscious after you click the button, BERT will reach you. You will be safe so that is one of the features we found out.”
Davijah Betancourt
Davijah Betancourt, BHS Hackers
“Our pitch is a four-part solution with a basic foundation of security and confidentiality. What we saw when did surveys with different doctor and companies is that the main concern with doctors, pharmaceuticals, etc is confidentiality of patient information, prescriptions etc. So, we have four main ideas. We have a website, an app, a kiosk and a call center. All of these have the ability to generate revenue, as well as to provide basic information for consumers, patients, as well as a one to one with doctors and hospitals. It is basically for ease of access.”
Beltraide, through the Small Business Development Center, will provide support for the ICT teams to build on their prototype. Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
Winners of the BELTRAIDE Business Hackathon will be announced next week at ENTRECON.
