Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD Hackathon Inspires Winning Innovations in Skin Health

Hackathon judges award $20,000 in prizes, with a grand prize still up for grabs. 

NEW YORK (March 29, 2017) – Four innovation teams took top prizes at the inaugural Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD Hackathon on March 10th and 11th, 2017. Judges awarded $5,000 to each winning team for their innovative proposals to address challenges in skin health. Next month, the teams are invited to give an extended pitch for the grand prize of $20,000 and a yearlong collaboration residency at the Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD flagship site at the Alexandria Center for Life Sciences in New York City.

The four hackathon winners include:

  • Acne care based on microbiome analysis
  • A game to engage children and teens in skin wellness and hydration
  • A three-in-one skin care regimen delivery system targeting Baby Boomer women
  • A personalized DIY skin care regimen system for today’s eco-conscious consumers

“The Hackathon is the culmination of a six-month digital skin health innovation series that our SHIELD community developed in partnership with the Global Coalition on Aging and Hacking Health New York,” explained Dr. Warren Winkelman, Senior Medical Director and Head of Medical Innovation at SHIELD. “Events like this represent what SHIELD is about: multi-disciplinary and multi-generational collaboration to advance skin wellness through innovation, both low tech and high tech.”

At the hackathon, 22 teams of 77 participants gathered at the Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD Center in New York City for two days, digging into the biggest challenges in skin health, designing solutions, and turning these ideas into competitive business proposals.

“This series has engaged members of the New York digital health community of all ages and all backgrounds on the growing importance of skin health throughout our increasingly long lives. Before they walked in the door at SHIELD, most of the participants had not given much thought to skin health. They walked out on Saturday night inspired to keep dreaming up new ways to empower skin wellness in our age of longevity,” said Melissa Mitchell, Executive Director of the Global Coalition on Aging, who served as a mentor to the teams.

“SHIELD clearly, like us, is part of this movement of people passionate about bringing innovation to healthcare,” said Luc Sirois, Founder of Hacking Health.

SHIELD charged the participants to develop innovative solutions in four challenge areas: Skin Health Literacy, Nutrition and Skin Health, Engaging Acne, and Skin Health Technology for the Aging Population. As the participants developed their business proposals and prepared their 5-minute pitches, they were guided along the way by mentors from within Nestlé Skin Health and from across the SHIELD network who generously shared their expertise. “I was honored to be able to coach these future entrepreneurs to help them prepare their pitches,” said Yvan Deurbroeck, Global VP of Communications for Nestlé Skin Health. “Seeing so much creativity at SHIELD and so many minds set to the task of advancing skin wellness was both inspiring and humbling.”

“We loved participating in the hackathon,” said Tammy Sachs, a member of the winning team in the Technology for the Aging track. “The mentors were incredibly helpful, and everyone was so supportive. We look forward to the next challenge.”

In addition to awarding the four checks, the panel judges – Julia Belaya of Plug and Play Innovation Center, Gurdane Bhutania, cofounder of venture capital firm FundRx; SHIELD Managing Director Didier Leclercq; Nestlé Skin Health Patent Counsel Jessica Mikus; and Jeff Powers, Galderma’s IT Director for Marketing and Commercial Operations – chose to bestow an Honorable Mention and invitation to return to a fifth team for its work developing an open source digital solution to empower developing countries across the globe to better address the burden of skin disease, its complications, and its impact on the health of their at-risk populations.

“We are excited about all of the truly incredible ideas created here at SHIELD this weekend,” said Mr. Leclercq. “And we can’t wait until next month when we will select one of these very talented teams to work with us over the coming year to turn their inspiration into reality.”

About Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD

Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD is a global network of innovation and education hubs gathering today’s most creative and visionary thinkers from diverse disciplines to generate, develop, and incubate ideas to advance skin health for tomorrow. SHIELD explores creative partnerships, new concepts, and technologies to help preserve lifelong skin health; mitigate the emergence of skin conditions; and integrate the skin dimension into the public consciousness, discourses on policy, and the organization of age-friendly spaces. More information at www.nestleskinhealth.com/shield

About the Global Coalition on Aging

GCOA is the world’s leading business voice on aging policy and strategy. GCOA advances policy and market solutions to ensure aging is a path for economic growth, winning business strategies, and social well-being.

About Hacking Health

Hacking Health aims to transform healthcare by connecting healthcare professionals with designers, developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs to build realistic, human-centric solutions to front-line healthcare problems.

Latest Developments

We keep our members and partners in touch with the most recent updates and opinions in the worldwide dialogue on population longevity and related issues.

What Old Age Might Be Like for Today’s 30-Year-Olds

Get ready for a new old age. With the U.S. fertility rate in a decadelong slump and the life expectancy of 65-year-old Americans approaching roughly 85, our aging nation is likely to grow older by midcentury, as the ratio of young to old continues to decline. The trend is likely to upend how our society is organized, making life very different for today’s 30-year-olds when they reach their 60s compared with life for 60-year-olds now.

World Population Reaches 8bn As It Grows Older

The world’s population reached 8bn people on Tuesday and will hit 9bn in 15 years as it experiences an unprecedented surge in the number of older people, according to the latest UN data. The global fertility rate has more than halved since the 1950s to 2.3 births per woman. With mortality also falling, the number of people aged 65 and over is expected to rise from 783mn in 2022 to 1bn by 2030 and reach 1.4bn by 2043, the UN population data revealed.

Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) Launches Cross-Sector Alliance Committed to Health Innovation at High-Level Forum on The Silver Economy

Today, the Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA), along with cross-sector stakeholders representing patient advocacy, policy, industry, and academic communities, announced the launch of the Alliance for Health Innovation at the High-Level Forum on the Silver Economy in New York. The Alliance is dedicated to establishing the importance of innovation in achieving healthy aging and health equity through investments, policy reforms, and strategic partnerships.

Japan Must Face Up to Growing Danger of Drug-resistant Germs

In the wake of more than 6.4 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide and unprecedented economic destruction, the global community has no excuse to be caught unprepared for the next pandemic. Yet right now, a devastating parallel plague is already underway and worsening. Some years, it is killing well over 1 million people, according to medical journal The Lancet.

A Bipartisan Bill Could Prevent The Next Pandemic

In Washington, Republicans and Democrats are typically at loggerheads when it comes to healthcare policy. Just consider the recent Inflation Reduction Act, which made extensive changes to Medicare and also extended Affordable Care Act subsidies. Every single congressional Democrat voted for the legislation, while every single member of the GOP voted against it. But occasionally, a bill is such an obviously good idea, and so desperately needed, that it commands significant bipartisan support. The PASTEUR Act, co-sponsored by 31 Democrats and 31 Republicans in the House and two members of each party in the Senate, is just such a bill.

Korea Must Act Now to Combat Growing AMR Threat

Public officials are overlooking one of the gravest long-term threats to the Korean people, the health system, and economy: antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Some pathogens ― bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses ― have evolved strains that resist the antimicrobial medications we currently have available to fight them. Health care professionals often must watch helplessly as patients succumb to infections that antibiotics could once have easily beaten. They know that new antimicrobials, including and especially antibiotics, could easily gain the victory ― but they have none at their disposal.

Policy Statement on the Impact of Price Negotiations on Innovation, Healthy Aging and Equity

As the CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) and a newly formed cross-sector Alliance for Health Innovation, we write to express our deep concern with the current legislation that allows for price “negotiations” in Medicare – a thinly veiled signal for America’s plunge into price controls that will have a devastating and adverse impact on biopharmaceutical innovation and our nations’ ability to support healthy aging.