BlueVenn wins The Estée Lauder Companies’ Hackathon in support of breast cancer

EVE - the breast cancer support smartwatch app

We’re so proud to announce that BlueVenn has won the Grand Prize and the Amazon Web Services "Get Started" Program Award at The Estée Lauder Companies’ Virtual Hackathon 2020! The Hackathon is part of Tech Day of Pink, an arm of The Estée Lauder Companies’ Breast Cancer Campaign, which calls on the global technology community to support lifesaving breast cancer research.

This year's ELC Hackathon included 821 participants, from 18 countries, submitting 92 entries, and was run as a virtual event taking place between September 24 and October 8. The event brought together technology enthusiasts, professionals and students, with the common aim of creating a piece of new or adapted technology with the potential to advance the fight against breast cancer.

Some of the Hackathon team Teams of 3-6 people, with creative, tech or scientific backgrounds, were mentored by coaches and challenged to raise awareness, build relationships, and perhaps even develop a concept that had real potential to solve problems or improve lives.

Members of the BlueVenn R&D and Customer Success teams joined with some of the ELC UK Marketing Team to develop a smartwatch app, christened ‘Eve’ in honor of Evelyn H. Lauder, co-creator of the iconic pink ribbon and founder of the Breast Cancer Campaign in 1992, which has to date raised over $89 million to support global research, education and medical services. The focus of 'Eve' is to improve the mental wellbeing and aftercare of breast cancer patients.

Watch a video of Team BlueVenn's winning entry

Eve: helping to create a personalized aftercare experience

Despite modern advancements in breast cancer detection and treatment, the mental wellbeing of patients, and any complementary services, can often be overlooked or be difficult to access. Modern advances in biometric wearable technologies (such as a smartwatch), however, have enabled people to better understand their physical and mental wellbeing, whilst the data collected can be extremely useful in allowing medical professionals to keep an eye on their patients’ overall wellbeing too.

EVE smart watch app & BlueVenn platform The winning BlueVenn/ELC UK project brings together biometric data and user input with medical advice, treatment information and planning tools, in order to support the patient’s wellbeing through a stressful and difficult time. The app synchronizes back to BlueVenn’s Customer Data Platform, using its embedded customer journey orchestration functionality to enable a two-way flow of data and communications between the breast cancer patient and their medical team. This creates a more personalized aftercare experience for the patient and provides the medical team with better, more actionable information on the wellbeing of their patient.

As part of our prize, we're excited to have won $1,500, a Virtual Coffee Session with ELC IT leaders, plus $5,000 Amazon Web Services computing credits and the assistance of AWS solution architects and mentors, to further build out the solution and business model to widen the practical applications of 'Eve'.

‘Eve’s projected functions are:

To connect medical teams with breast cancer patients using biometric data to monitor mood, physical health and wellbeing.
To act as a gateway to approved, trustworthy advice, to help patients discover their ‘new normal’ after breast cancer treatment.
To provide checklists, reminders and motivational help for appointments and daily routines.
To connect breast cancer patients going through similar stress and anxiety, to help build relationships and support networks.
To send data back to the BlueVenn journey personalization platform, to connect medical teams with their patients to deliver personalized, data-driven aftercare experiences.

Chris Hares, VP Technology at BlueVenn, said:

“Through the timely delivery of information, and by demystifying the complex treatment process a patient will go through and their psychological wellbeing, we hope that intelligent intervention can occur when unusual biometric data is recorded in the app. By providing this data back to a clinician/aftercare specialist, the app will aim to further benefit the personalization of the patient’s treatment and recovery plan.”

Murali Kiruba, Transformation Technology Director at Estée Lauder Companies, said:

“Our 2020 Hackathon team was made up from BlueVenn software developers and our own internal team. The BlueVenn technology connects marketers with customers to create very personalized customer journeys. Therefore, we looked to use this transferable knowledge and technology, connected to our newly created smartwatch app, to link medical professionals with their patients, leading to personalized treatment plans and improved aftercare and wellbeing for breast cancer patients.”

All of this hard work was done by the team in support of ELC’s main Breast Cancer Campaign mission – to create a breast cancer-free world. Despite significant advances in reducing breast cancer mortality rates, it is still one of the Top 2 most common cancers, and the 5th most common cause of cancer death (the World Health Organization recorded 2.09 million cases in 2018, with 627,000 deaths). In fact, the Global Cancer Observatory said in 2018 that a women was diagnosed with breast cancer, somewhere in the world, every 15 seconds.

Now, that is a disease well worth fighting against, and as Evelyn H. Lauder said, “It really is something that can never be done by any one person; it has to be done by a group.” That’s why BlueVenn is grateful that leaders of technology have been given the chance to stand up and be counted, doing what they do best. We're so honored to have been declared the winners of The Virtual Hackathon 2020, and the team can't wait to get started with developing 'Eve' further! Let’s hope that, together, we can achieve Evelyn’s vision sooner rather than later. Find out more about the Breast Cancer Campaign and make a donation here.