Disrupt NY 2017 Hackathon: ADHD VR App Diagnoses Disorder In Minutes

A group of New Jersey high school juniors developed a virtual reality app in 24 hours to diagnose attention-deficit, hyperactivity disorder to win the Disrupt NY 2017 Hackathon on Sunday.

The first runner-up was a method for fixing coding errors as developers write code, and the second runner-up was a grocery scanning app enabling users to waste less food.

The ADHD app, reVIVE, is made up of three tests to gauge the user’s motor skills, concentration and reaction time. Tasks include navigating a maze or touching objects as they light up while users stand in a defined space.

It normally takes at least six months to diagnose ADHD and finding the right combination of drugs to control it takes even longer. The app, however, will give doctors a clearer picture of a patient’s condition within minutes.

Akshaya Dinesh, 17; Sowmya Patapati, 16; and Amulya Balakrishnan, 17, met at the hackathon and designed the app, which they say can be used as a telemedicine tool.

“We really wanted to quantify ADHD diagnoses,” Dinesh told TechCrunch. “When you’re immersed in a 360 environment, patients experience the environment as if they’re really there.”

ADHD is a brain disorder marked by a pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity or impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development. The disorder can appears in children as young as 3 and can be mistaken for emotional or disciplinary problems. Adults with ADHD may have a history of poor academic performance, problems at work and difficult or failed relationships, the National Institute of Mental Health says on its website.

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ADHD is treated with both stimulants and nonstimulants, as well as psychotherapy and behavior modification.

About 11 percent of children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

The first runner-up, CodeCorrect, was developed by solo hacker Pat Needham, who plugged into the StackOverflow API (application programming interface) to find solutions to common coding errors quickly and efficiently to reduce the amount of time and energy involved in troubleshooting coding errors.

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“This is for aspiring developers or junior developers that face errors more senior developers would know the answers to off the top of their head,” Needham told TechCrunch. “It’s for people who lack mentors or might not know the proper ways to search most effectively.”

Needham, who began coding in high school, is a full-stack developer. His hack involves a piece of JavaScript that reroutes uncaught exceptions to a local node JavaScript web server. It then gets sent to the StackOverflow API, which searches for error messages and sends back the top solutions to user questions. Answers are taken from the StackOverflow and can be converted into instructions and applied automatically.

The second runner-up was WasteNot, which allows users to scan grocery receipts. The app checks average expiration times and alerts the user before the food expires so less is wasted.

The Disrupt NY Hackathon precedes the Disrupt NY Conference and involves developers and engineers from across the globe who participate in a hacking endurance test. Teams join forces to build new products on the spot. ReVIVE received the $5,000 grand prize.

The Disrupt NY 2017 Conference begins Monday and runs through Wednesday.