The winning design from the Healthcare team will help Care Design NY assist individuals with IDD in accessing essential support and services.

We’ve just wrapped up the second annual Microsoft Tech for Social Impact (TSI) Hack4Good hackathon in our NYC Times Square office. The event brought together TSI employees with customers and partners working in seven participating teams to design and build innovative hacks, creatively leveraging AI to accelerate nonprofit missions through innovative use cases across a number of sector categories, including Healthcare, Humanitarian Care and Relief, Social Services, Research, Supply Chain, Museums and Archives and AI Industry.

Each team created a high-level pitch showcasing the merits of their project. Submissions were evaluated by their potential to drive mission impact and responsible use of AI, as well as their ease of access, ability to scale, and the estimated cost to bring to market. We were honored to have industry thought leaders Billy Bickett, Head of Maker’s Lab for Tech Soup and Bob Benoit, CIO for The Gates Foundation as part of our judge’s panel.

The designs were rooted in real need and provided real value to the sector.

I’m proud to announce the top honors went to the healthcare team, who elected to take on building a solution that addresses challenges faced by Care Design NY, a nonprofit in New York State that provides care management to individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD).

Our work at TSI aims to empower every nonprofit and mission driven organization with Microsoft technology to accelerate social good. Now, we are pitting AI against some of the world’s biggest problems and supporting the development of solutions to address them.  

This year’s Hack4Good challenge was to design a concept with broad application and sector reusability while addressing the specifics of the chosen use case. The input, guidance, and expertise of the participating nonprofits were critical in ensuring that the designs were rooted in real need and produced something that provided real value to the sector.

The idea was to enable Care Design NY to spend more time working directly and providing services to individuals.

The winning design from the Healthcare team will help Care Design NY assists individuals with IDD in accessing essential support and services. To achieve this, they create “In Process Life Plans”—documents submitted to the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) for service approval. These plans typically take eight hours to produce, but Care Design NY aims to streamline the process to just two hours while maintaining a thorough, person-centered approach.

Hack4Good’s Healthcare team lead Robert Dolney explained, “Our goal was to enable Care Design NY to spend more time working directly and providing services to individuals much faster than before. And so far, the feedback has been extremely positive. We are already exploring possible next steps with Care Design NY to scale the solution and bring it to the entire organization!”

And Joe Shen, Care Design NY’s Chief Strategy Officer put it best when he said, “The individuals and families we support are at the center of all we do, and we are excited to see how the work we’ve done through the Hack4Good hackathon can improve access to services, as well as provide Care Design NY’s workforce with the tools they need do their crucial jobs effectively and efficiently.”

Over the coming months, we’ll stay in touch with Care Design NY to share updates about how they’re further developing and deploying the project, and any early outcomes it’s producing.

Congratulations to Team Healthcare on their hack project and the runners up on Team Supply Chain and Team Museums and Archives. A huge thanks to all the participants for an incredible event. I can still feel the energy and passion, and I already look forward to next year!

A complete summary of the other competing teams and brief details on their hacks:

Humanitarian Care and Relief – The Humanitarian team developed HELP4GOOD, an application to aid refugees in their struggle for survival and safety and to connect them with support services. The app employs intelligent document processing and language translation capabilities and support for refugees who cannot communicate in the local language. It can also facilitate connections with experts, such as doctors, during emergencies. 
Social Services – The Social Services team developed CONFIA, a conversational friendly intelligent application aimed at improving mental health through interactive AI whereby users can talk and seek advice without judgment, which helps address a niche in the care pathway and narrows the mental health gap. 
Research – The Research team developed AI Driven Data Analytics Platform Tool (ADDAPT), an app that uses AI to achieve school integration and equity. It provides a dynamic tool that integrates demographic, educational, and housing data to map and analyze segregation patterns in urban areas.  The ultimate goal is to offer a resource for policymakers, urban planners, and community organizers to make informed decisions that promote integration and inclusivity.  
Supply Chain – The Supply Chain team developed an app for Vitalant, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit blood and biotherapies healthcare organizations. Using relevant data to build a machine learning model and use AI to predict how much inventory to stock at the nearest distribution center, the app enables Vitalant managers to make better informed decisions about where blood products and services are needed most should go. 
Museums and Archives – The Museum team developed Gallery Glider, an AI-powered accelerator that enables museums to create a bespoke interactive application that engages and inspires all visitors with by extending their experience to ‘real life’ and into the magic of the museum’s collections. Social Services.

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