A part of the Georgia Tech Grand Challenges Program, Health Empowered is an interdisciplinary team of students working to improve established data collection methods in West Africa in order to amplify the public health response to infectious disease. We aim to empower local communities to face public health challenges by equipping them with technology that streamlines the transition from paper medical records to electronic data in order to identify and respond to public health trends. Our innovative technology will enable communities to efficiently and accurately relay healthcare data, decreasing the time delay between the development of public health crises and response from appropriate governing agencies.

1. Health Empowered
Lauren Aycock, Ann Johnson, Olivia Pool, Hannah Santillo, and Marie Stauffer

2. Our Team
Lauren
Biomedical Engineer
Ann
Industrial & Systems Engineer
Marie
Biomedical Engineer
Hannah
Chemical Engineer
Olivia
Chemical Engineer

3. Team Background
• Funded through the Grand Challenges program at Georgia Tech
• Advisors:
• Adam Weiss, Carter Center
• Dr. Adjo Kennedy, Georgia Tech
• Conferences:
• 2015 Ebola Symposium at Oxford University
• Health Connect South
• Expert Guidance:
• Vivian Singletary, The Task Force for Global Health
• Dr. Julie Hollberg, Chief Medical Information Officer at Emory Hospital

4. Problem Space
Current healthcare database systems in developing nations are both
inefficient and inaccurate.
• Several systems are already in place and overlap
• Time delay between outbreak and response
• Large discrepancies in reported data
• Successful initiatives have community buy-in
• Patient care is the highest priority in clinical settings

5. Our Technology
We aim to design a syndromic data
collection system which will be
compatible with current systems and
integrate seamlessly into clinical flow.
Easily
Sanitized
Conserves
Power
Easy to
Maintain
User
Friendly
Culturally
Sensitive
Reduces
User
Error
Cheap to
Produce
Durable
Intuitive
Design

6. What Success Looks Like
• Collaborate with community to design hardware
• Interview healthcare workers to identify software needs
• Build a working prototype of our device
• Design functional software to employ
• Develop a pilot study in a partner community
• Decrease time delay between outbreak and response

7. What Work is Being Done
Identify Pilot
Community
Design
Hardware
Develop
Software
• Already, we have…
• Conducted extensive research on problem space
• Made important contacts in public health & development
• Next, we will…

8. Health Empowered
Health Empowered will transform the
development of sustainable healthcare
infrastructure on the local scale.