Coding for Change: National Academies Hackathons Tackle the U.S. STI Epidemic

The National Academies co-hosted two hackathons aimed at spurring tech solutions to the nation’s STI crisis. Meet some of the innovators taking up the challenge.

By Akshara Karthik

In the United States, the rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) has reached epidemic proportions, with more than 2.5 million cases reported in 2022 alone. As new technology and media tools continue to advance, including artificial intelligence (AI), there is a growing opportunity for novel avenues to prevent the spread of STIs and democratize access to diagnostic tools and care resources.

With the promise of technological solutions in mind, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies), partnered with the Centers for Disease Control Prevention, and the National Association of County and City Health Officials to host two hackathons designed to spur new ideas to help curb the rapidly growing number of STI cases in the United States.

An in-person event, held in June 2023 in Irvine, California, and a virtual event, held September through October that same year, brought together competitors from all over the country.

“Hearing stories from not only individuals in the health care space, but also people who had struggled with STIs was very compelling,” said competitor Joshua Choi, a junior at the University of California, Irvine. Joshua entered the in-person hackathon alongside teammates Paul Wong, a rising junior at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Nathan Choi, a rising junior at the University of California, Irvine. The trio competed under the team name, Peekaboo Labs, and won a first-place prize for their solution Poppy, an AI-powered STI diagnosis application.

Poppy leverages technology to actively dismantle barriers and humanize sexual health care. The application empowers individuals to confidently navigate the STI diagnosis process, utilize critical resources, and obtain tailored sexual health advice. Through personalized questions and safe, in-house image processing, Poppy offers accurate preliminary diagnoses and personalized feedback.

Fueled by their passion for building innovative solutions, Peekaboo Labs has attended numerous hackathons in the past. But the National Academies hackathon was especially compelling due to the real-world nature of the problem they were challenged with.

“I decided to do this because the problem that was presented to us was clearly niche compared to other hackathons we’ve seen,” said Paul. “This one [was] more public health geared, and I just thought it would be really interesting.”

Entering the competition was a little outside the Peekaboo Labs’ comfort zone, shared Nathan Choi, a rising junior at the University of California, Irvine. The team members are all pursuing computer science degrees but came to the competition with no public health background, he said.

On the other hand, Yash Raka, a recent graduate from Arizona State University, and Palak Shah, a recent graduate from Northwestern University, entered the virtual competition with strong backgrounds in public health, but minimal experience with hackathons. The duo won an Honorable Mention award at the virtual hackathon for their generative-AI powered chatbot, Solace, which provides users with personalized action plans for STI testing and local care resources.

Palak’s passion for machine learning innovation in health care led her to participate in pitch competitions in the past, while Yash’s interest in the intersection between technology and medicine inspired his involvement in a few hackathons. The two said the National Academies’ event offered something particularly valuable to competitors: mentorship opportunities. “[In] the hackathons that I’d done in the past…you get in a room with a ton of other people, have computers, and come up with a solution in a set amount of time. You’re not meeting with mentors. You’re not getting that extra boost that I think that this particular hackathon gave us.”

While the teams behind Poppy and Solace have different backgrounds, their unique perspectives allowed them to contribute to the product design process in a novel manner. “[We saw] that there was so much potential and so much work to be done in this field, [and it] really put us over the edge [in] wanting to pursue the hackathon,” explained Palak.

Statistics in the 2021 National Academies consensus report Sexually Transmitted Infections: Adopting a Sexual Health Paradigm regarding the growing incidence rate of STIs—as well as the disproportionate impact they have on younger demographics—was incredibly alarming to both teams. “It really struck us that this was not only an opportunity to build out a cool product, but also a really great time to bring STI awareness amongst the [youth demographic],” said Joshua.

Palak echoed Joshua’s sentiments. “People aren’t seeking out the help that they may need. People aren’t talking about it as much on campuses as [they] really should be. It is an epidemic after all, right? And so, reading through the [National Academies] report, we definitely got to learn a lot more about how prevalent STIs were,” added Palak.

The societal stigma surrounding STIs was another big concern to the two teams. Consequently, they hoped to develop applications that would educate the younger generation, especially young university students, about STIs and bring screening and treatment plans to the comforts of their home.

The Product Design Process

While the names of these applications may have been spontaneously inspired, their deeper meanings reveal active efforts to destigmatize STIs through metaphor. Both teams described wanting to choose product names that reflect feelings of optimism, comfort, and safety. “I think it really worked out in the end when people talk about Poppy,” said Paul. “It’s very memorable and an easy word to talk to people [about].”

“We wanted whoever comes [to our app] to come in anonymously…[and] get an idea of what to do next without feeling like [they are] in the hot seat at any point,” described Yash. “We wanted to hold their hand through that entire process, and that’s where the name Solace came [from] because it’s almost like a place of solace. You come there, you have that conversation, and you figure out how to navigate what could be a really difficult situation.”

Developing Poppy and Solace, however, was not as simplistic as their naming process. In fact, during the hackathon, Peekaboo Labs created ten different iterations of Poppy based on the feedback they received from the industry-professional mentors on hand.

“After learning about the stats, we had a room and a whiteboard…so we [drew] a whole map of [ideas for] what we could possibly build and explore,” shared Nathan. After brainstorming and selecting their strongest ideas, the team presented to judges and mentors. Using that feedback, they continued to iterate until they had a viable product concept. “Once we got that, we [continued] to iterate on that idea, and then [talked about] it with the judges and mentors until we [got] something that we [were] confident in,” said Nathan.

The Solace team had a comparable design process, though their experience differed due to the virtual nature of their Hackathon. “We brainstormed [through] Zoom meetings to build our initial idea and held deadlines [for ourselves],” explained Palak. After mentor meetings, Yash and Palak would discuss the notes they took and consider what changes they wanted to implement before their next meeting. The strategy “helped us a lot in terms of the process of morphing our idea and growing it to be something so much more than what we started off with,” said Palak.

Yash and Palak were initially inspired by period-tracking applications and the resources they offer in terms of prediction measures and symptom-related articles. They built a product with many of the same capabilities. However, after receiving feedback from fellow college students and mentors about an overwhelming user interface, the team began adopting a simple, conversation-based design. “We got the idea of [building a] conversation [interface] where [the user gets a] walkthrough of the process, and at the same time, [are provided with] answers to the questions [they] wanted to ask in the app, but in a more human way,” described Palak.

With Yash working from Arizona and Palak in Boston, coding long-distance proved to be an invigorating challenge. Sometimes, they would spend upwards of 12 hours a day on Zoom refining their product design. “[We started] treating it like one [an] in-person Hackathon towards the end,” said Palak. “Yash is working on something, [and] I’m working on something else on my end. That way at least, we [could] communicate in real time.”

Given that coding software lack real-time sharing and editing capabilities, there was a lot of back and forth. “Every time I [fixed] some kind of error. Another error [popped] up on her end,” added Yash. “But overall, I’m really glad it was virtual, because we got to do this in the first place.”

Despite encountering bugs, Yash and Palak remain undeterred in refining their initial prototype into a fully functional application. Most recently, they have explored incorporating natural language processing (NLP). “Technically speaking, we’d mentioned NLP a few times. That’s something that we originally did not integrate into our [prototype],” said Yash. Since the hackathon ended, the two have been working on integrating NLP into Solace to reduce the manual effort required for extracting information from user conversations.

Like the Solace developers, the Poppy team emphasized that the iteration process has continued long after the hackathon. Their current product design is significantly different from Peekaboo Labs’ initial ideas during the event. The team originally planned on developing an iPad-focused application, given its faster prototyping capabilities. However, they began shifting towards a web-based product by the end of the Hackathon and have built a custom algorithm for Poppy. “A lot of our [time] has been used to engineer the platform to create this full stack project where we create the servers, create the website, and create the underlying tech that allows the STI screening to happen intelligently, for which we [leveraged] large language models to make the experience comprehensive,” described Joshua.

“We’ve strayed away from the [original] Hackathon idea itself, and it’s a lot better now. It’s more stable and its especially ground that we like to stand on today,” added Nathan.

Post-Hackathon Developments

The mentorship opportunities offered through the hackathon helped Peekaboo Labs make connections in the health care field as they ideated their product. In the months following the event, the team has participated in monthly calls with National Academies staff to get valuable insight on planning their next steps. The three students have also continued to meet frequently with health experts, including clinicians in Colorado and professors from the University of Colorado and Johns Hopkins University, to continue developing a public-ready prototype of Poppy. “We are full-time students, but we almost had a meeting once every two weeks with an organization or professor or health care worker to really gain insight [into] what we are building,” said Joshua.

The funding provided by the National Academies has also helped them travel for conferences, establish their application’s website, obtain API tokens to access large language models, and make Poppy an official LLC.

The team has saved the majority of the prize money, for advertising purposes as they prepare Poppy for public rollout in the near future. “We’ve been interviewing people to gain feedback on our products, but the next big step would be to bring it out to the public,” explained Joshua.

Yash and Palak are gearing up to market Solace as well. They plan on partnering with different schools and colleges to ensure students have adequate access to the STI-related resources they need. The process for obtaining funding has been more complicated than they initially realized. “It’s been a little bit more difficult primarily, because [the STI field is] relatively niche, at least in our experience,” shared Yash. “Finding people willing to provide funding [and] support [our] idea has been slightly difficult beyond the initial NAM proposal. We’re hoping to find somebody who might be able to fund an app like this and [help us] continue it,” said Yash.

The duo aspires to attend medical school, optimistic about the broad opportunities it will offer for growing Solace. “I think [it will] offer a really great foundation to actually interact with people that find something like [our STI application] extremely important,” explained Yash. “[Medical school] might provide us the exact avenue that we need to take this product that we have in hand and really reach a population with it.”

Peekaboo Labs has also faced a unique set of challenges. Given their position as software engineers and UI/UX developers without public health experience, Poppy has been met with skepticism from professors and clinics. The team says that a lack of reputation within the health care sector has proven to be an obstacle in the product rollout process.

For now, Peekaboo Labs is focusing on cultivating relationships with experts and building out a functional and effective product that they hope will build confidence among members of the health care community.

“It takes a lot of time, but I think it’s good,” said Joshua. “Whatever is worthwhile is probably going to be really hard. It’s going to take a lot of time to build, so we’re in for that investment.”

About the Author

Akshara Karthik is a student studying the impact of communications on the advancement of technology and privacy policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. She is also minoring in International Studies, Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS), and Performing Arts Management and Entrepreneurship (PAME). Akshara interned at the National Academy of Medicine in Summer 2024.