There will be one million unfilled technical jobs in 2020. There are 2,220,300 people in the U.S. prison system. Opportunity Through Data hopes to address this gap in human capital while simultaneously reducing recidivism rates in California prisons and increasing the number of women, especially minority women, in technical roles. The project is centered around a ten week certificate course on data science for inmates who have attained their high school diploma or GED. The course, taught by university students and industry volunteers, will connect women to lucrative data analysis jobs upon release from prison. Throughout the course, participants will learn statistics and computer science, and they will complete projects that can be used to bolster their resumes upon release. Opportunity Through Data will develop key industry partnerships to place program graduates in jobs, thus reducing recidivism.
Suturing is a low-complexity yet technical and time-intensive step of every open surgical procedure. In recent years, few innovations in wound closure have worked to improve the process of closing open incisions. The QuickStitch device takes an innovative approach to enhancing the efficiency of the hand-suturing process, which is considered the gold standard in wound closure. By automating the delivery of the needle through the tissue, the tying of the surgical knot, and the cutting of the suture tail, QuickStitch helps save precious and costly OR time by accelerating and simplifying the wound closure process. The device can be utilized in the closure of any layer of tissue and promises the same quality of wound closure outcomes as hand-suturing. Most importantly, QuickStitch will decrease time spent suturing by more than 75% and therefore will reduce patient risk by decreasing time spent under anesthesia.
The incidence of surgical site infections (SSI) in low-middle income countries (LMIC) is up to six times higher than in developed countries. SSI can be prevented by ensuring that instruments are clean and sterile between procedures. In the developing world, this proves difficult with limited resources. Current methods for decontaminating surgical instruments involve a bleach soak, which does not effectively remove the organic matter, and the bleach itself is corrosive to the stainless steel tools. SurgeCare is a locally sourced solution in the form of a foot-powered surgical instrument washer, which utilizes pressurized and recycled water, has the potential to provide surgeons in LMIC with clean instruments, thus decreasing the frequency of infection related to surgery.
Plastic waste. Poor roofing. Unemployment. Poverty. — Four developing world problems with one solution. In sixty years, the world has produced 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic and recycled only 9%. In developing countries, plastic waste is generally burned, releasing pollutants into the atmosphere. Quality roofing material is often unaffordable for many subsistence farmers and poor urban dwellers. Trash to Tiles (T3) addresses all of these issues by changing the paradigm to use plastic waste as a vast, profitable resource. T3’s innovative, energy and cost efficient technology produces quality, affordable roofing tiles from recycled plastic using only one machine which entrepreneurs can easily finance. Housing is made safer and more comfortable, and plastic waste and atmospheric pollution are reduced. The franchise business model empowers local entrepreneurs to achieve economic independence and enables Trash to Tiles to scale rapidly.
Using basic behavioral finance principles and leveraging the Donor Advised Fund structure, GivingFund makes it easier for young professionals to give, give more, and give more intentionally, all through a single, online interface. Users can automatically donate a percentage of their paycheck to their personal “givingfund”. GivingFund pools the capital across funds to invest in the impact investing market, tax-free – giving users access to more deals than the average retail investor. Users can donate the returns and their original principal, to any NGO of their choice – when they want, how they want. By providing space between the monthly payment and the donation experience, and by providing a central spot to track and measure all of a user’s impact throughout the year, GivingFund believes it can turn the pain and obligation of giving that Millennials feel into joy and even excitement, and double the amount of impact capital Millennials deploy.
Better Journey provides a platform for organizations to more effectively engage with refugee communities at scale and track key milestones along a refugee’s path. Through a web based messaging application on the refugee’s phone, caseworkers define milestones for their refugee clients and customize various forms of engagement around those milestones. Caseworkers can send the right message at the right time along a refugee’s journey based on defined triggers to provide reminders, motivation and information regarding milestone targets. Caseworkers can also follow up and solicit information from refugees asynchronously and have responses automatically upload to their current case management system. Finally, Caseworkers can effectively track the progress of their cases and intervene if necessary. Engagement and relationship building are at the core of the platform and the team believes that better engagement leads to a better journey and ultimately better outcomes.
50% of Cambodian American refugees meet criteria for depression, yet only 9% who receive any form of treatment receive therapeutic care. Cambodian American refugees have faced social isolation and mental health issues for over twenty years since resettling. Project គូរ (Kour) connects elderly Cambodian American refugees with culturally related art activities as a means of combating trauma. Sessions take place over the course of twelve weeks, where participants will receive social support, community bonding, and a platform to tell their stories. Each session culminates with an art showcase, inviting the Khmer American community to relate to a shared history via personal narratives. This showcase acts as a fundraiser to promote and finance other mental health interventions for the refugee community.
Last Night is a workshop and fully developed card game that opens up a space for conversations among college-aged players about how to discern when a sexual situation may not be clearly consensual. The emotional and educational impact of Last Night hinges on shifting the perspective in a story that players help write. Competitive gameplay traditions encourage players to collect cards that construct a narrative about a date they hope was successful, but players learn in a post-play epilogue that their date may have seen their actions differently–sometimes as disrespectful or even hurtful. Last Night and its accompanying workshop form a creative tool to inspire conversations about consent and respectful dating behavior.
Every patient’s nightmare is putting one’s health at risk by receiving a failed surgery. In the US, medical errors kill more than 200,000 patients per year, making it the third-leading cause of death. The avoidable morbidity is partially due to lack of vigilance from manual counting and tracking of surgical instruments. Time-consuming and error-prone, the current tracking procedures jeopardize patient safety by replacing time that should be spent on patient care with time accounting for surgical instruments. VIDI builds smart systems that leverage computer vision to increase hospital workflow efficiency and minimize medical errors by tracking the full spectrum of surgical tools, enhancing inter-department and multi-room collaboration, and seamlessly generating documentation and analyses for hospital staff.
