Eyed Health Innovation, 2 Indonesian Students Sent To Boston

Illustration of the Ministry of Health's laboratory for scientific research. (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - A total of two Indonesian students were sent to the Grand Final Hackathon in Boston, United States. Both of them got golden tickets to be able to innovate in the health sector in the Bio Farma x Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Hacking Medicine Competition.

Deputy President Director of Bio Farma Soleh Ayudi said two students named Anis Rohmasari and Anggit Wignya Adi Prasati passed the screening from 1,061 candidates from 11 countries who then narrowed to 200 participants who would be subject to MIT.

Pesera is divided into groups tasked with designing health innovations, they then present them to world health experts and get group winners to automatic ticket winners competing at MIT.

One of them is Anis Rohmasari, a medical student at Padjajaran University who and her team created an application containing recommendations for healthy food for cancer sufferers who are undergoing chemotherapy.

"We are trying to help people who follow chemotherapy, because during chemotherapy it will usually be followed by unpleasant side effects such as vomiting, and we like to be confused about what to eat. What kind of person is that for fear of interacting with drugs," he said, confiscated by Antara.

Finally, the 22-year-old Yogyakarta girl collected research on nutrition and the right formulation regarding food that is safe to consume so that cancer cells do not grow easily and instead add to the patient's immune system.

"One example is that hepatotoxic drugs are like damage to the liver, we can add substances such as dates that are usually given by doctors in the form of supplements," he said, giving an example.

The idea of this health innovation was motivated by Anis' personal experience who had treated her mother who was suffering from cancer, at that time she was confused about whether herbal medicines were safe for consumption during chemotherapy.

Furthermore, this research will be further explored, and later when he continues the competition at MIT he will continue his mission to innovation related to cancer.

Meanwhile, the winner of the gold ticket from other international competitions at Bio Farma is Anggit Widnya Prasati, a 19-year-old Gadjah Mada University pharmaceutical student who creates an application containing data on health trends.

This girl from Semarang and her team focus more on efforts to meet the needs of the health industry, especially pharmaceuticals.

"We provide useful data for pharmaceutical companies, we focus on collecting data on what trends in society and that's for recommendations to companies in need," he said.

Seeing these talents, Deputy for Human Resources, Technology and Information Management of the Ministry of SOEs Tedi Bharata said he was proud, even this event was said to be a covert effort by his ministry in seeing young talents.

"We appreciate the achievements of our talents, the two people will be sent to Boston for the grand final at MIT, we see those who come there are not kidding, these two people were chosen from a thousand people then 200 participants so they are not playing games, we want to see what they are competing in there like," he said.

Furthermore, SOE Minister Erick Thohir is also currently continuing to encourage increased digitalization in all lines, and the competition which was attended by 11 countries with 200 participants is one of its implementations.

President Director of Bio Farma Shadiq Akasya hopes that the event he organizes will be able to bring changes to the Indonesian health industry.

This state-owned health sector admits that it seeks to facilitate the talented young generation to be able to see real problems directly and provide various innovative solutions.

This activity is supported by teaching staff from MIT who are mentors for the participants during this activity. Hopefully in the future we can work with other global-scale institutions that can help us solve problems in the future," said Shadiq.