Dental hackathon generates novel solutions

Manipal: Manipal College of Dental Sciences, Manipal (MCODS) and Innovation Center hosted the first edition of Dental Hackathon: “Hacking Dentistry -Making It Affordable” from March 28 to 31 at Idea café in Marena here. There was a tremendous response from the students who came up with some very good solutions.

About 140 participants from six constituent colleges of MAHE registered for the four-day event. Dr Poornima Baliga Pro Vice Chancellor, Health Sciences, MAHE who inaugurated the event emphasised on the need to form interdisciplinary teams to make dentistry simpler, cheaper and better. Dr. Keerthilatha M Pai, Dean MCODS Manipal, urged the participants to make the most of the opportunity and come up with unique dental solutions.

The participants formed teams of five each and presented their problem statements. This was followed by two days of intense hacking, where teams came up with prototype and models of their novel solutions.

During the grand finale, total of 19 teams presented their novel ideas to an eminent panel of judges. A simple LED light on the fingertips to provide illumination during dental camps in rural areas, a herbal lozenge which can double as mouthwash during long journeys and a tongue and cheek retractor for geriatric patients were adjudged winners and took home a cash prize money of 10,000 rupees each. Three other teams were awarded seed money of 5,000 rupees to further develop the prototype.

Dr. Shruthi Acharya, Coordinator of the event said, “It was a good initiative by Innovation Center MAHE to help budding dentists to become entrepreneurs too”. Dr. Arun Shanbhag Chief Innovation Officer, MAHE, encouraged the participants to use the platform as a springboard to further develop their ideas with continued efforts and perseverance, using various incubators in MAHE.