Image by Joelle Hagen, Sad, Happy, and Neutral AVI

Hack For Kids With NF

A symptom tracking app for kids with Neurofibromatosis(NF)

The Children’s tumor foundation called for healthcare startups, developers, and hackathon enthusiasts to develop solutions for neurofibromatosis on Aug 7, 2020. Hack for NF took place October 2 — November 13, 2020.

I learned about the event from my career coach at Flatiron School. We made a team of 2 data scientists, Eunjoo Byeon and Seyma Tas, 2 software developers, Enrique Pittaluga and Gabriel Joseph and 1 designer Joelle Hagen. When we met for the first time as a team, we had only 14 days until the deadline. We had to be well organized because we didn’t have time to make a single mistake. We started to collect as much domain knowledge as we could about NF.

Here is a very brief summary of what we learned:

What is NF?

Neurofibromatosis(NF) is a set of genetic disorders that develop tumors anywhere in the nervous system (brain and spinal cord) throughout the body.

There are three types of NF: NF1, NF2, and Schwannomatosis.

Neurofibromatosis(NF) is a rare disease that a lot of people have. Yes, this is an irony! NF1 is seen in one of every 3000 births. That means there are more than 100,000 NF1 patients in the US. This is a huge number for a rare…