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TigerText Sponsors Boston Children's Hacking Pediatrics Annual Event; Announces Winner of its "Best Implementation" Prize
[October 22, 2014]

TigerText Sponsors Boston Children's Hacking Pediatrics Annual Event; Announces Winner of its "Best Implementation" Prize


SANTA MONICA, Calif. --(Business Wire)--

TigerText, the leader in secure, real-time messaging for the enterprise, today announced the winner of the "Best Implementation" Prize given at this year's Hacking Pediatrics Hackathon - an all-weekend event focused on creating solutions to promote child health and wellness. Team BreatheSmart, which consisted of four MIT (News - Alert) students, was recognized for creating a TigerText API integration that addresses the challenge of regulating inhaler usage by allowing inhaler users to receive TigerText notifications in response to deficient or excessive usage.

Hacking Pediatrics - a joint collaboration between Boston Children's Hospital and Hacking Medicine at MIT - held their second annual hackathon this past weekend, bringing together inventive, forward-thinking minds to create solutions that promote child health and wellness. Taking place at the Microsoft (News - Alert) NERD Center in Cambridge, start-up teams of engineers and programmers from MIT and the local Boston tech community spent the weekend charged with a project that aspired to help pediatric healthcare organizations with much-needed solutions. In 36 hours, 150 participants comprised of engineers, clinicians, designers, entrepreneurs, and developers worked to help change the lives of children in need of medical care in dramatic ways.

Event sponsor, TigerText, challenged hackathon participants to use the TigerText API to create a new app or enhance an existing one to adress challenges in pediatric healthcare. Participant submissions were judged on the tool's innovativeness, its usability, and the overall challenge(s) it helped to address. Team BreatheSmart won for its app alerts, which address the issue of regulating inhaler usage. The team outfitted an inhaler with an electronic sensor that sends a signal to the TigerText app (via Bluetooth) each time the inhaler is depressed. The app can check usage against a set of rules and if the rules are violated, such as excessive usage during a certain period of time, a TigerText message is sent to the user, parent, and/or clinician, helping moderate deficient or excessive inhaler usage.



"We're thrilled to have been a part of the Hacking Pediatrics event this year," said Brad Brooks (News - Alert), Co-Founder and CEO of TigerText. "We selected Team BreatheSmart as the winner with their app that helps ensure proper inhaler usage and easily alerts parents or the user via secure text when something is awry. It is innovative ideas like these that are not only disrupting pediatric healthcare, but also improving communication effectiveness and enhancing physicians' abilities to coordinate care."

"We were excited to expand the opportunities for our Hacking Pediatrics participants this year, and joining forces with TigerText is a perfect example of how we did that," said Dr. Michael Docktor, Hacking Pediatrics Co-Founder and Pediatric Gastroenterologist at Boston Children's Hospital. "Our teams aim to build incredible things that nobody would have ever dreamed of to help keep children healthy, happy and safe. We're pleased to see TigerText inspiring participants to develop real solutions for our industry that tackle the challenges pediatric healthcare faces on a daily basis."


For more information about Hacking Pediatrics, visit www.hackingpediatrics.com.

About TigerText

TigerText is the leader in secure, real-time messaging for the enterprise. TigerText's encrypted messaging platform keeps communications safe, improves workflows, and complies with industry regulations. Developed to address the security needs, BYOD policies, and message restrictions in the enterprise, TigerText is committed to keeping mobile communications secure, private and impermanent. More than 5,000 facilities and five of the top ten largest for-profit health systems in the nation, including Universal Health Services and Community Health Systems, rely on TigerText to comply with HIPAA and replace unsecured SMS text messaging that leaves protected health and other confidential information at risk. For more information visit www.linkedin.com/company/tigertext, www.facebook.com/tigertext, or www.twitter.com/tigertext.


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