MyAche wins Rep. Jerry McNerney’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s Ninth District

Rep. Jerry McNerney has named Sai Karthik Puvvula of Mountain House High School, Suraj Ganiger of Mountain House High School, and Abhiram Hanumanchi of Mountain House High School as the winners of the 2022 Congressional App Challenge in California’s Ninth District.

 

 

When asked what inspired the creation of MyAche, the students said, ”For our HOSA club competitive event, we had to develop an innovation for a healthcare problem, build the innovation, and present it to a panel of judges. We decided to focus on the topic of headaches because we really wanted to hone in on a problem that a lot of people overlook. Headaches are a common everyday occurrence that plague people, but their dangers are overlooked. Headaches have been found to be linked to major neurological problems and seizures, and ignoring a basic symptom in our body is dangerous for our health. We decided to make a screener app for headaches with this purpose in mind. Another reason we created MyAche is that we believe that technology is being underutilized in healthcare to fit the patient. While technological advancements have allowed doctors, nurses, and primary care providers to vitalize healthcare, patients haven’t been able to control their own health using technology. While doctor’s visits and hospital checkups should continue and should still be practiced, apps such as MyAche will put healthcare into the hands of patients, so they are not kept in the dark about their health. Everyday problems can be combated effectively when patients understand the risks and doctors are kept in the loop, and MyAche was built to help achieve this goal. We believe that through apps like MyAche, doctors, and patients can come together to provide robust patient care where everyone lives happier and healthier lives. This app went on to place 5th at the 2022 Cal-HOSA State Leadership Conference and even achieved international recognition where it placed Top 20 at the 2022 HOSA International Leadership Conference, where we got to show off the app to the world in Nashville, Tennessee, connecting with patients and people around the world.”

 

 

The Congressional App Challenge smashed previous participation records in 2022. All told, 9,011 students registered for this year’s competition – creating 2,707 fully-functioning apps for 335 Members of Congress across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and the District of Columbia. This year’s competition set the record for most student registrations, most apps submitted, most apps per district submitted, and most districts receiving over 20 apps. The wildly successful competition continues to impress upon House Members the importance of computer science education and the need to develop a pipeline of diverse, domestic STEM talent. 


The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.

The 2023 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2023, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.