DiamondHacks
On April 5–6, 2025, the Association for Computing Machinery at University of California San Diego hosted DiamondHacks, an impact-driven hackathon that brought together more than 300 participants representing over a dozen colleges and universities across the region. Participants developed innovative, tech-powered solutions to real-world challenges within the competition tracks in education, social good, and consumer-focused patient safety.
A highlight of the weekend was the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, which encouraged participants to explore how their ideas could empower patients while directly improving their health outcomes. Sponsored by the Patient Safety Technology Challenge initiative, the challenge included mentorship and a workshop that introduced students to the key issues in patient safety. Salvador Gullo Neto, MD, PhD, who led the “Patient Safety 101” workshop and mentored teams throughout the weekend, praised the participants’ passion and creativity. “I loved being part of DiamondHacks and the Patient Safety Technology Challenge. The energy of this new generation could lead us to new disruptive solutions for old patient safety problems,” he said.
The winning team, Inga, focused on enhanced accessibility, communication, and equity in patient care. Team Inga won the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, earning each team member an Amazfit Band 7 fitness tracker. The team set out to create a solution that would improve healthcare access and safety, especially for underserved communities and non-native English speakers. “Language barriers and complex medical forms can directly impact patient outcomes,” the team explained. Their solution, Inga, is an AI-powered platform that allows patients to chat with medical documents in their native language, receive simplified translations of complex medical terms, and navigate healthcare forms using a step-by-step, guided form filler.
Team member Ninad Satish highlighted the broader mission of their work, “Being part of the Patient Safety Technology Challenge was an exciting opportunity to build tools that improve health outcomes and promote equitable access to healthcare, regardless of someone’s background.” Looking ahead, the Inga team plans to further develop the guided form-filling feature into a conversational experience, integrate a voice assistant to support users with limited literacy, and expand the platform to include more languages. Ultimately, the team “envisions Inga supporting more languages, connecting with healthcare providers, and helping bridge communication gaps in medical settings around the world.”
By partnering with the Patient Safety Technology Challenge, DiamondHacks 2025 proved to be a celebration of tech for social good, empowering student innovators to apply their skills toward meaningful solutions. With projects like Inga leading the way, DiamondHacks has demonstrated that the future of healthcare technology is not only bright but driven by a generation determined to make healthcare more inclusive and accessible.
