Teenager wins hack day award

An early warning score app created by a 16 year-old won ‘best app for improving clinicians’ lives’ at NHS Hack Day in Cardiff.

The ‘Clever Early Warning System’ web app, or ClEWS as it is called for short, was created by teenager Neena Dugar, who attended the hack day on 25-26 January with her father, an NHS surgeon.

The app aims to make the recording of early warning scores and nursing observations easier for hospital staff.

Dugar, who had developed some of the app over the Christmas holiday, wanted to get help to develop it further over the course of the weekend in Cardiff.

“The app has improved a lot compared to when I first brought it to the hack hay. It has an IOS barcode scanner for instance, which is really cool,” she said.

Being the youngest attendee at the NHS Hack Day did not faze the young developer and she attracted a large team that were interested in working with her.

“It went really well, and it was really cool. It was nice working with people for a change. So far on the project it has just been me, she said.

The app brings together data from vital signs machines into a web app, which automatically generate an Early Warning Score and will email the ward manager if a patient’s score escalates.

Nurses can see a list of patients that are due for nursing observations based on their Early Warning Scores and the system includes an IOS app that scans the barcode of the patient’s wristband and subsequently brings up their vital signs record. It also lets staff generate a report of the patients’ stats with graphs and visualisations.

“The idea is to replace the paper records and make it as similar as possible as paper. We can also print it and put it in paper records if that’s what people want,” said Dugar

The next step is to get the app trialled in a hospital.

The young app developer has been coding since she was “young” and has been to several hack day type events for children and youth.

“I’ve been to a few similar events for people under 18 where you get kids as young as 6 or 7 and then I feel old being 16,” she said.

The NHS Hack Day in Cardiff was the sixth Hack Day where more than clinicians, developers, patients and designers gathered to work on projects to improve the NHS.

The next NHS Hack Day will take place in the London area in May this year.