CajunCodeFest 6.0 Names Opioid Healthcare Challenge Winners

(Lafayette, LA) The sixth annual CajunCodeFest coding competition and summit was held April 13 & 14, 2018 in the UL Lafayette Research Park presented by the Center for Business & Information Technologies.

The Opioid Healthcare Summit was Friday, April 13 at the LITE Center bringing together thought-leaders from federal and state levels who provided updates on initiatives, policies, and best practices to address this issue. Special guests included Bruce Greenstein, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Rebekah Gee, Secretary, Louisiana Department of Health, U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, MD, Congressman Clay Higgins, Louisiana’s Third District, Dr. Carrie Castille, State Director of Louisiana, U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, The Hon. Judge Blair Edwards, 21st Judicial District Juvenile Drug Court, Dr. Vindell Washington, Chief Medical Officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, and many other influential leaders.

The Opioid Healthcare Coding Challenge on Friday and Saturday at the Cecil J. Picard Center drew 150+ participants including eight K-12 teams, six university teams, five professional developer teams, mentors and subject matter experts working to transform health care data into opioid epidemic related apps and tools. 

The teams worked for 23 hours to find a solution using 361 unique health data sets  provided or informed by the CajunCodeFest data portal that they could access only three days in advance. Teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges with expertise in government, healthcare, and technology. The judging criteria focused on the solution’s fit to the theme, overall creativity, user experience, and sustainability with a clear benefit to the stakeholders.

The winning teams took home $11,000 in cash and the Best K-12 team won Apple iPads provided by the LHC Group.

2018 Winners

First Place Overall & Best K-12 Team representing Comeaux High – Team myPillz – Team members include Prachi Rajiwadia, Thomas Nguyen, Noah Karavatakis, Jesse Breeland and Cha’Kerra Lewis. Team mentors are Lisa Ranney and Mike Davis.

Best College Team (tie) – Team Comp – Team members include Robert Indorf, Austin Pohlmann, Nicholas Barreca, and Chad Galloway

Team Favorite & Best College Team (tie)– Team Const Bool Winners = True. Team members include Copeland Corley, Andrew Yoshimura, Ny Pham, and Zachary Kirby

The team of five students from Comeaux High School won the Best Overall Team and Best K-12 Team mentored by Lisa Ranney and Mike Davis. The Comeaux High team presented the myPillz app that connects to the National Drug Code Directory to help a patient track prescription drug usage. The real-time tracker flags opioid pills for user attention and offers guidance on proper dosage frequencies to avoid possible substance addiction. It also addresses the needs of patients who get prescriptions from multiple doctors. The app could be extended to feed patient prescription data directly to doctors for reference during patient appointments.

Thank you to event sponsors CGI, Lafayette General Health, LHC Group, Ocean’s Healthcare, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, the Opportunity Machine, One Acadiana, Acadiana Companies and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, Waitr and Simply Vital Health for making this event possible.