City officials tap tech community to help solve public health problems (Baltimore Sun)
Friday Mar 3rd, 2017
Can technology solve public health problems? City leaders think so.
At the behest of the Baltimore city health department, teams of entrepreneurs have come up with seven ways that the city could use technology to address challenges in improving public health.
The teams are comprised of students, engineers, software developers and designers that collaborated with local tech incubators to develop apps, websites or other means to tackle specific problems. They include stemming opioid overdoses, preventing infant deaths, providing resources to ex-offenders, tracking asthma or providing some other solution that the city officials would have difficulty producing on their own.
The teams have been working for the past three months and plan to present their projects to the city, and business and tech communities Thursday evening, and could end up with small city grants of $5,000 to $25,000 or other aid to complete their projects and get them up and running. The city would retain a license to use the technology but would have no ownership stake.
All the new products are expected to be used in Baltimore in some way, and some could be developed into commercial products sold to other public health departments or entities, said Mike Fried, chief information officer for the city health department.