Drug overdoses now kill more Americans than guns.
Last year I took on a side project to support fellow MIT alumni and learn some things from a different field. Five of us, with one alumni mentor, created an app to help rapidly deliver the antidote to an opioid overdose (Naloxone) to those who need it. You could call it the Uber for Naloxone. It was a different experience for me, in part because I hadn't worked on applications before and also because the five of us never once met in the same room (a few of us had known each other before though). We coordinated over Google Hangouts and email across four time zones, spanning California to England! There were some late nights working on this project from Kansas and at the SailFuture house, but it was worth it.
Our submission to the government-sponsored hackathon was recognized in this article from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Additionally, team leader Ben Taylor is continuing this work with his company LedgerDomain.
Last year I took on a side project to support fellow MIT alumni and learn some things from a different field. Five of us, with one alumni mentor, created an app to help rapidly deliver the antidote to an opioid overdose (Naloxone) to those who need it. You could call it the Uber for Naloxone. It was a different experience for me, in part because I hadn't worked on applications before and also because the five of us never once met in the same room (a few of us had known each other before though). We coordinated over Google Hangouts and email across four time zones, spanning California to England! There were some late nights working on this project from Kansas and at the SailFuture house, but it was worth it.
Our submission to the government-sponsored hackathon was recognized in this article from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Additionally, team leader Ben Taylor is continuing this work with his company LedgerDomain.
| "FDA also congratulates Team MIT on their app concept, NalNow, which the judges recognized as a second high-performing submission. Team MIT receives an honorable mention as the team with the second-highest score in the Competition. Team MIT is represented by Dr. Hattie Chung, Grace Young, Sinchan Banerjee, Rodrigo Ipince and Emily Zhao. View the NalNow app video here: http://bit.ly/nalnow_video." -- FDA blog |
LedgerDomain announcement October 2017:
| Greetings! Writing to share our LedgerDomain launch news and thank everyone for their help while we were in stealth mode. Nineteen months ago, we decided that blockchain would drive the fourth wave in accounting. We set to work using blockchain to build safe spaces where participants across enterprises could transact and share sensitive information. 40,000 lines of code later, we are ready to share the good news. WHY BLOCKCHAIN? Blockchain's cryptographic safeguards have enabled cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to be transferred by strangers globally. These same techniques shall enable global enterprises to transact across the firewall. Additionally, blockchain's structure has the potential for users to confidentially analyze their own granular historical data. SAFE SPACES On Wall Street, we have continuous auctions in safe spaces called trading platforms. LedgerDomain was founded to deliver safe spaces for sensitive transactions to the Global 2000. Our first step to test use cases was to sponsor the sterling effort by TeamMIT, which finished second in the FDA challenge last Fall with NalNow (bit.ly/nalnow_video). Most viewers had no clue that NalNow contemplated a blockchain on the backend; we wouldn't have it any other way. OUR SOLUTION Our target customers are typically global in scope, exchanging high value goods & services, operating in over a hundred countries, and are highly regulated. Based on their feedback, we have initially focused on blockchain platforms that are cryptocurrency free, and chose Hyperledger, a Linux Foundation project, as our technology core. Cryptocurrencies are on our roadmap, but to quote Orson Welles, "no wine before its time". Our first demo moved a stream of hypothetical pill bottles marked with 2D barcodes through the pharmaceutical supply chain. Our smart contracts controlled the flow of the bottles while our Selvedge blockchain orchestration server powered the client experience, managing user access & privileges while provisioning system resources on the fly. CURRENT MILESTONE Our goal is to make the blockchain seamless and invisible to our users, enabling them to enjoy its benefits without the mental overhead. We are ready to pilot at scale now while readying Selvedge V1.1 for those clients who scale in ludicrous mode. I'd like to recognize & thank my partners, Dr. Victor Dods, Dr. Gabe Hare & Dr. Aaron Smith; as well as our amazing TeamMIT members, Hattie, Emily, Sinchan, Rodrigo & Grace; those advising behind the scenes, including Max, Will, Tim, Jeremy, Chris & Adrian; as well as those in the real world, including Michael, Mike, Steve, Angeliki, Chad, Ted, Eric, Thierry, JB, Vinay, Marcelino, Larry, Ruey, Jeff, Faye, Ansel, Damian, Michelle, Kevin, Neil, Dan, Kate, Ron, David, Anju, Anthony & Rose. |
For more information about the opioid epidemic I recommend the documentary "Prescription for Change" featuring Macklemore and President Obama. It's free on Youtube (here). The more I learned, the more I realized how many people I know whom have been affected by this epidemic. It put me in awe and respect of how fragile our chemical balances are as humans.
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