Philadelphia’s patients, providers, and care teams are getting a boost from a new generation of problem-solvers. At the inaugural Smarter Care Datathon, sponsored by the Penn Community Collaboratory for Co-Creation, nearly seventy students from Penn Nursing and Penn Engineering came together to tackle real-world healthcare challenges—building data-driven tools to improve how hospitals respond to patient needs.
Using the open MIMIC-IV critical care dataset, student teams worked on urgent issues like staffing, documentation, and early warning systems. The winning team, CARE (Critical-care Acuity & Resource Evaluation Metric), developed a new triage scoring system to help hospitals prioritize patients and allocate resources more effectively.
“This powerful synergy showcases the critical importance of interdisciplinary teamwork in solving complex healthcare challenges,” said George Demiris, a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor and Penn Nursing’s Associate Dean for Research and Innovation.. “By uniting the clinical expertise of nursing with the innovative problem-solving skills of engineering, we are forging a path toward a healthier, more inclusive future for patient care.”