hackathon

The Walgreens API team is very excited to be involved again with Photo Hack Day and will be heading to the city that never sleeps (NYC) for Photo Hack Day 6 to take place at Aviary’s headquarters on December 6-7, 2014.

This event offers a really great opportunity to work alongside our Walgreens Developer Evangelist to create a magical QuickPrints integration. We have been involved with past Photo Hack Days at Dropbox (2012) and Facebook (2013) and have always had a great experience with the many photo partners we meet and foster at theses events!

We look forward to some awesome innovative ideas from this event, which you can learn more about at http://photohackday.org.

Well, needless to say going up to the bitter north in Minnesota to judge pill reminders and adherence apps may not be everyones most exciting weekend event, but we must exclaim how blown away we were with the whole event! Not only did we get the beautiful fall weather that exists very rarely we got some really amazing ideas and apps created. The host, Treehouse Health was not only in a wonderful location, but provided exemplarily staff and facilities for the event. Thanks a lot JD and Treehouse Health! We had a extremely verbose group that ranged from python developers all the way to nurse practitioners and paramedics. So when it came to the 3rd day of the event we got pretty excited about the results and presentations that people gave. We were looking to give a $1000 prize to the app that best integrated the Walgreens Prescription Refill / Transfer API or Balance Rewards API. 

@That_Drew_Guy & @danielrasmuson after the announcement of the awesome #HackMedMgmt @WalgreensAPI integration winner! pic.twitter.com/9uHVMRFF0z

— Drew Schweinfurth (@That_Drew_Guy) October 30, 2014

After an extended deliberation time we came to the conclusion that the Pillable was the obvious winner based on the creative design, development environment, and usage of both the APIs. The app was built to help a user review their pills and talk about the experiences that they go through when taking their prescription. The app also allowed for vitals to be recorded in the review process then connecting to Walgreens by sending (weight, blood pressure, blood glucose) and prescriptions refills / transfers. 

"The Medication Management Hackathon sponsored by Walgreens was a memorable experience for me. The community, volunteers, and local businesses all came together to think big for a weekend. I had the privilege of talking with awesome people, learning a ton, and winning the walgreens API challenge. Hurray! It was really cool to see people give up their weekend for a cause that matters."  - Daniel Rasmuson, Developer and Dreamer of Pillable.

We look forward to working with the developer behind the Pillable app over the coming weeks to help him launch the application in production and claim not only our $1,000 prize, but also the number of Walgreens users who would like to manage their medications to stay happy and healthy! We were very impressed with all the other groups' presentations as well and we look forward to helping them release their ideas into the internets. If you missed the event this year you are more than welcome to shoot a message to our developer evangelist Drew Schweinfurth and he can answer any questions about the event, our apis, or any upcoming events we are planning.

Search Twitter for #HackMedMgmt to see the all the glorious tweets.