There are more than 35 million people living with limb loss around the world. Luckily, advances in medicine, robotics, sensors and 3-D printing have transformed what’s possible for human mobility. In this episode of HealthChangers, we explore how human-centered design is helping to make health care better for those who live with limb loss. We’re joined by Erica Rife, the Managing Director for the Design Museum Foundation, a non-profit focused on educating the world about design.

In health care, we never know where the next great idea might come from. It might not even be from someone working in health care. It was in that spirit where the #WTFix-A-Thon, a social movement created by HealthSparq, was born. We’ve shared What-The-Fix before here on HealthChangers. HealthSparq holds #WTFix events where regular people with amazing stories teach the health care industry and offer solutions to pain points in their personal experiences. The What-The-Fix-Athon stemmed from that approach to gather solutions through a hackathon. The event took place at Techfest Northwest 2019 and was sponsored by Cambia company, HealthSparq, which is focused on helping people make smarter health care decisions.

In this episode of HealthChangers, we go live to the hackathon and talk to a group of students from coding schools in Portland, Oregon, who brought their personal stories and tech experience to design apps aimed at solving health care problems. There were four What-The-Fix-Athon teams. Each had 36 hours to investigate a health care problem and design a solution. With the help of judges, they refined their ideas and then presented them at TechFestNW’s Pitchfest.