HIVE team seeks to help with patient compliance at home

Engineers are known for finding solutions to problems. When Yasir Hamad, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was experiencing a problem tracking patient compliance with at-home drug therapy, he talked to Joe Beggs, an undergraduate student majoring in biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, and asked for help at Sling Health’s Problem Day.

Beggs assembled a team that developed a solution to help patients get optimal treatment for blood-borne bacterial infection as well as preventing readmission to hospitals, saving the health-care system money.

Joe Beggs (left) assembled a team (from left) comprised of Glen Kleinschmidt, a biomedical engineering student; Chris Sleckman, a 2019 biomedical engineering graduate; Allie Frank, an occupational therapy student at the School of Medicine; and Sai Dodda, a student at St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

The team, HIVE, entered its work in the 2019 Discovery Competition and recently took first place, earning $20,000 in cash, $5,000 in in-kind legal services from St. Louis law firm Polsinelli and $5,000 in in-kind services from Custom Technologies, a St. Louis-based mold and machine shop. In addition, the team received six months of complimentary workspace form TechArtista, a collaborative workspace in the Central West End founded by McKelvey Engineering alumnus Chris Holt.

Read more on the McKelvey School of Engineering site.

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