The Stony Brook Computing Society (SBCS) won the “Best Healthcare” award at HackHarvard on Monday, Oct. 13, beating over 600 submissions. Their winning app, Flexy (And I Know It), is an app that guides users through physical therapy exercises.
The winning team was composed of four SBCS members, all of whom are majoring in computer science (CS). Amir Hamza, the president of SBCS and a senior, came up with the idea for the app. Sean Erfan, a junior, wrote the algorithm used to correct the user’s posture. Jamie Calub, a branding manager for SBCS and a sophomore, created the app’s menus. Ritesh Chavan, the vice president of SBCS and a senior, wrote the code for the app’s database.
The team was initially surprised to learn that there even was a prize for healthcare, let alone that they won an award in that category. Once they got over their shock, they expressed their elation.
“We were walking off the stage with our prizes and Ritesh picked me up,” Erfan recalled.
The majority of the team did not previously have a background in computer science, only getting into the field after entering college.
“I watched ‘The Social Network.’ I’ve seen it so many times. That movie was the only reason for me to get into CS,” Chavan said. “So I saw that movie, and after that I wanted to try CS, so I tried the CS50 course from Harvard [University] and I was really good.”
Their app guides users through daily stretches and exercises geared toward physical therapy and maintaining musculoskeletal health. The software detects the user’s limbs through a pose detection algorithm and provides a visual aid to help correct their form.
“It’s kinda like ‘Just Dance,’” Calub said. “In order to move forward, [your pose] has to match up.”
According to Hamza, the team originally came up with the idea for the app after thinking about an old injury of his.
“I had shoulder pain from that time because I had [an] injury while I was doing [a] workout, so I was like, ‘Okay, when I’m moving my workout that’s like when we were painting something like circles.’ So we are moving our wrist in that circle and in that we are kinda doing therapy in that way too, so that’s how we got the idea of the second part of the project, which was helping with pains from any kind of therapy,” Hamza said.
The app is also intended to be a resource for physical therapy, in which users are helped by a chatbot that guides them through exercises that won’t exacerbate their injuries. The team intends to implement features such as daily reminders and feedback for exercise, [virtual reality] integration and accessibility features.
“Another future expansion we might do would be … accessibility by having [audible feedback] tell you how to improve the exercise you’re doing,” Calub said.
Despite the high stakes of the contest, the team said the atmosphere of the contest was relaxed and collaborative.
“It’s actually pretty fun, to be honest. There are so many people working on their own projects, but they also have so many fun events,” Hamza said. “It’s not just about coding, coding, coding — you can also go around and talk with people [and] there are also some fun workshops that you can attend.”
SBCS tries to fill a similar role as a place where science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students can learn and socialize.
“One thing about CS students, or any major related to technology, is that they’re very introverted. That’s why we host social events so that they can come over and talk to people who are also passionate about technology,” Hamza said.
The club also hosts workshops oriented toward learning how to use both new and existing technologies, as well as regular field trips to industry leaders such as Google and Amazon.
“That’s our main goal: give them the professional side of the technology world and also give them the learning side of the technology world so they can have the experience for both,” Hamza said.
