A Windsor Regional Hospital nurse took the top prize at an international competition where mobile “apps” for the health care sector are designed and developed.

Kaitlyn Sheehan, an RN in the cardiac catheterization lab at the hospital’s Ouellette campus, was the “Overall Judges Favourite” recipient at Hacking Health Windsor Detroit for the app she conceptualized called “Stent Tracker.” It’s a Web-based app that allows patients to store their cardiac stent information, manage their medication list, schedule reminders to take important medications, and provide an educational tool on heart health after a coronary angioplasty. With an app, all this information can be synced on a mobile device, rather than a patient card or pamphlet that could easily get lost.

The idea by Kaitlyn, who also works at the Cardiothoracic ICU at Harper University Hospital at the DMC in Detroit, was so good that it was also judged as the app with the “Highest Potential for Adoption.”

Kaitlyn came up with the idea herself, and assembled a team to help her design a prototype for the app, which will be further developed this year.

“It was so exciting,” Kaitlyn says of the first annual Windsor-Detroit competition. “It had an amazing team – programmers, med students and myself – to create an app that can really help our patients.”

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About 200 people participated in the 1st annual Hacking Health Windsor Detroit at TechTown Detroit on May 1-3, which teamed up health care professionals – doctors, nurses, pharmacists and hospital admins—with professionals from the IT sector—programmers, designers — to design mobile applications for the health care sector.

Hacking Health “hackathons” take place around the world, and are designed to improve health care through collaboration between health care professionals and technology creators.

More information about Hacking Health can be found at www.hackinghealth.ca.