Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is pioneering the use of technologies to educate people on the importance of becoming an organ donor, and to support individuals currently on the organ donation waitlist.
Dr. Andrew Cameron, M.D., Ph.D, Chief, Division of Transplantation - Dr. Cameron is a Professor of Surgery and heads the Liver Transplantation Program. His research is focused on the use of stem cells in liver transplantation, as well as the use of social media to increase organ donation.
The ORGANIZE team learned that JHU was working on using social media for helping patients find living donors, and they referred JHU to FT. Dr. Cameron recognized the expertise we had amassed in using technology to solve problems in the organ donation space from our work building ORGANIZE. Over time he has continued to see the value in a team like ours with deep experience building startups as the JHU team begins its strategy for commercializing the DONOR app to its own entity outside of the university.
The ORGANIZE team learned that JHU was working on using social media for helping patients find living donors, and they referred JHU to FT. Dr. Cameron recognized the expertise we had amassed in using technology to solve problems in the organ donation space from our work building ORGANIZE. Over time he has continued to see the value in a team like ours with deep experience building startups as the JHU team begins its strategy for commercializing the DONOR app to its own entity outside of the university.
The primary impact our work was to build out a full v1 of the DONOR app that was easy enough for a sick patient who is not comfortable with technology to use so that they could write their story and post it on social media. With the v2 of the app, we’re expanding the functionality to enable friends and family of the patient to also create their DONOR stories, further increasing the chances of finding a living donor for their loved one. V1 of the DONOR app has been in use at 3 - 4 transplant centers around the country, with plans to scale up to 100+. Our initial work with JHU has shown that patients who use social media to tell their story are 8x more likely to find a donor than those who do not.
The primary impact our work was to build out a full v1 of the DONOR app that was easy enough for a sick patient who is not comfortable with technology to use so that they could write their story and post it on social media. With the v2 of the app, we’re expanding the functionality to enable friends and family of the patient to also create their DONOR stories, further increasing the chances of finding a living donor for their loved one. V1 of the DONOR app has been in use at 3 - 4 transplant centers around the country, with plans to scale up to 100+. Our initial work with JHU has shown that patients who use social media to tell their story are 8x more likely to find a donor than those who do not.
