Recently, Castlight hosted its 26th Hackathon: Primary Care, Reimagined. This theme aligns nicely with our recent combination with Vera Whole Health, a pioneer in advanced primary care. Our goal for this Hackathon was to rethink access to primary care and redefine how it integrates with the Castlight app. 

Overall, nine teams presented final projects and 38 people participated—including, for the first time ever, four of our new colleagues from Vera! Four winners were chosen and each winning team chose a charity for Castlight to donate to. As Castlight and Vera move forward with planning, these projects will be seriously considered for inclusion in our product roadmap.

Interactive Post-Visit Care Plans

Currently, patients typically leave their doctor’s office with a piece of paper outlining the next steps for their personal health journey. This serves as their post-visit care plan. Unfortunately, many patients don’t read the paper, quickly forget what it says, or aren’t sure what the notes mean. This can lead to poor health outcomes.

This Hackathon team wants to make post-visit care plans more personal, interactive, and dynamic. The idea is that the care plan could be pushed into the Castlight app, which would trigger the app to remind patients to complete the action item—“Hi Karen, have you picked up your prescription yet?” or “Hi Scott, do you need help scheduling an appointment with the physical therapist?” In addition, Castlight Care Guides could help members better understand and execute their action items.

On behalf of this project, Castlight is making a donation to International Rescue Committee.

“Phygital”: Bridging Physical/In-Person Care with the Digital Experience

Today, digital health platforms and primary care are fairly disconnected experiences (which is exactly what Castlight and Vera are hoping to change!). The Phygital Hackathon team wants to embed tools and functionalities into the Castlight app in an effort to bridge the in-person and digital experience, creating a feedback loop that improves continuity of care.

Within the app, the member could schedule an appointment and receive reminders about their appointment along with follow-up care messages once the appointment is over. The follow-up messages could serve multiple purposes. For example, it could be checking in to see how the member is doing or offering to help set up future appointments. The messages would also include positive reinforcement, such as, “We saw you visited your physical therapist. That’s great! Here are 100 points for completing that action item. Redeem your points here.”

This would create a more cohesive and impactful member experience, which would ultimately increase engagement and improve health outcomes.

On behalf of this project, Castlight is making a donation to Every Mother Counts.

Next Generation Doctor Visit Experience

Going to the doctor can be a complex and rather involved process. That’s where VisitPal, this Hackathon team’s solution, could come in. VisitPal would help members and their families or caregivers prepare for a provider visit (sharing medical history, listing questions to ask, and so forth), record audio of the visit, and leverage AI and machine learning to transcribe the recording and generate a summary and key takeaways. By doing this, VisitPal will help members remember the steps they need to take next—plus, it’ll remove the need for them to memorize everything the doctor says or vigorously take notes.

On behalf of this project, Castlight is making a donation to Feeding America.

Third Party Consent

Currently, Castlight customer support guides are not permitted to share any personal health data with a member’s spouse or partner due to HIPAA restrictions unless the member provides consent and a business associate agreement (BAA) is completed. However, the BAA process can be complicated and lengthy—and with healthcare, time really is of the essence.

With the new Third Party Consent feature, which would be designed to be compliant with HIPAA regulations, members would be able to provide consent directly within the Castlight app, and they would be able to do it in real-time when talking to members of the customer support team. This would allow members and their spouses or partners to be in-the-know about critical health information and next steps.

On behalf of this project, Castlight is making a donation to Doctors Without Borders.


Other project ideas included a preventive care screening platform, providing a visual search option showcasing a human illustration to indicate points of pain, identifying opportunities to work with large independent physician groups, a wellness dashboard primary care physicians can view, and more. 

This was Castlight’s 26th hackathon since launching our first one in 2013. Hackathons are a great opportunity for employees across the entire organization to come together, brainstorm ideas, and collaborate on bringing those ideas to life. We are impressed by the degree of enthusiasm, creativity, and teamwork Castlighters and Verites display during these fun events.