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The Med AppJam: A Model for an Interprofessional Student-Centered mHealth App Competition

  • Education & Training
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Abstract

The Med AppJam is a 2-week long competition where students from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine are partnered with students from the University of California, Irvine School of Information and Computer Sciences in interprofessional teams to develop mobile health applications for use by clinicians and patients. The success of the Med AppJam comes from the unique opportunity for students to mutually contribute their content expertise to improve the clinical landscape while expanding their technology literacy and savvy. Since 2012, about 285 computer science students and over 90 medical students have collaborated to design and develop 53 iOS mHealth apps during the event. The Med AppJam model has been replicated in an Autism AppJam, a competition focused on the needs of a specific population, and with high school students in a mini Pre-Med AppJam using a paper prototyping approach. It is proposed that other medical schools consider implementation of a local Med AppJam as a viable model for engaging students in technology for healthcare.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Dean Ralph Clayman and Thomas Antunez of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine and Dean Hal Stern and Colleen O’Higgins of the University of California, Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) for their support, and especially the following ICS Student Council officers (past and present) for their work in organizing the Med AppJam events: Johnson Liu, Matthew Sprehn, Nithin Jilla, Audrey Auyang, David Curtis, Delian Petrov, Stephanie Chang, Austin Sherron and Phil Ma.

Ethical Standards

The manuscript does not contain clinical studies or patient data.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, 836 Health Sciences Road, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Julie Youm & Warren Wiechmann

Authors
  1. Julie Youm
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  2. Warren Wiechmann
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Correspondence to Julie Youm.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Education & Training

Med AppJam 2013 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZvveUpU0xA

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Youm, J., Wiechmann, W. The Med AppJam: A Model for an Interprofessional Student-Centered mHealth App Competition. J Med Syst 39, 34 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0216-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-015-0216-4

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