Yale Healthcare Hackathon to Encourage New Uses for Artificial Intelligence

"What I love," says Alyssa Siefert, Engineering Director at Yale Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology (CBIT), "is a democratization of problem solving." Siefert is one of the lead organizers of the Yale Healthcare Hackathon, an event in its fifth year that brings together a diverse group of clinicians, engineers, designers, patients and community members Jan 19-21 at Yale School of Medicine to come up with solutions to healthcare challenges. Last year, the event had representatives from eight countries and two dozen universities, and those numbers have been on the rise. About half the participants are non-Yale. The main sponsor of this year's event is 4Catalyzer, a Guilford, Connecticut-based accelerator founded by Dr. Jonathan Rothberg, who serves as its Chief Strategy Officer, for launching new biomedical startups with a heavy emphasis on medical devices, artificial intelligence and big data.