{"id":227282,"date":"2025-12-19T14:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T00:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=227282"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T00:07:09","slug":"asru-hackathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/12\/19\/asru-hackathon\/","title":{"rendered":"<abbr>AI<\/abbr> tool to detect hidden health distress wins international hackathon"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><figure id=\"attachment_227283\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-227283\" style=\"width: 676px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manoa-asru-hackathon-winners.jpg\" alt=\"three people standing and smiling next to a posterboard\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" class=\"size-full wp-image-227283\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manoa-asru-hackathon-winners.jpg 676w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manoa-asru-hackathon-winners-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manoa-asru-hackathon-winners-130x73.jpg 130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-227283\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fahim Yasir, Quang Loc Lam and Akib Sadmanee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A University of <span lang=\"haw\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M&#257;noa team won the Best Novelty and Impact Award at an international hackathon for a project designed to transform how community health workers (<abbr>CHWs<\/abbr>) support patients during and after remote check-ins.<\/p>\n<p>The winning project, &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/AkibSadmanee\/Aurion-copilot\">Aurion <abbr>CHW<\/abbr> Compassion Kit<\/a>,&rdquo; acts as a &ldquo;digital co-pilot,&rdquo; utilizing speech analysis and artificial intelligence to flag possible signs of hidden distress. The system analyzes both what a patient says and how it is said&#8212;through the tone and pacing of a patient\u2019s speech&#8212;to detect possible signs of emotional or mental distress and sends a discreet alert to the <abbr>CHW<\/abbr> along with a context aware suggestion to guide a more supportive response.<\/p>\n<p>The goal of Aurion is to reduce missed emotional cues and workload of <abbr>CHWs<\/abbr> so that they can focus more on giving people the care they need. Beyond real-time support, the tool streamlines post-conversation administrative workflows. The tool is designed to reduce post-conversation  paperwork for <abbr>CHWs<\/abbr> by about 70&#37; by automatically filling out forms for them.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa team included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Akib Sadmanee (<abbr title=\"Doctor of Philosophy\">PhD<\/abbr> student in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ics.hawaii.edu\/\">computer science<\/a> and a master\u2019s graduate)<\/li>\n<li>Quang Loc Lam (<abbr>PhD<\/abbr> student in <a href=\"https:\/\/shidler.hawaii.edu\/itm-home\">information technology management<\/a> and a master\u2019s graduate in economics)<\/li>\n<li>Fahim Yasir (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.uhcancercenter.org\/\"><abbr>UH<\/abbr> Cancer Center<\/a> data systems analyst and a master\u2019s graduate in <a href=\"https:\/\/ece.hawaii.edu\/home\/\">electrical and computer engineering<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&ldquo;We wanted to create something that could make a real difference, especially here in <span lang=\"haw\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>,&rdquo; Sadmanee said. &ldquo;Tools like this have the potential to improve care in communities where access and distance can be real challenges.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The hackathon was held December 5&#8211;6, at the <abbr>UH<\/abbr> M&#257;noa Campus Center, and was part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding (<abbr>ASRU<\/abbr>) Workshop held December 6 to December 10 at the Hyatt Regency, Waik&#299;k&#299;. The event brought together students, researchers and professionals to develop solutions to real-world challenges in speech and language technology.<\/p>\n<p>The team presented its work during the main <abbr>ASRU<\/abbr> 2025 program verbally in front of judges and also as a poster to the general audience, and received a certificate of achievement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The goal of Aurion is to reduce missed emotional cues and workload of <abbr>CHWs<\/abbr> so that they can focus more on giving people the care they need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":227283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1602,679,179,541,197,1592,182,484,416,1466,146,660,169,9],"class_list":["post-227282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-ai","tag-alumni-recognition","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-computer-science","tag-economics","tag-electrical-and-computer-engineering","tag-engineering","tag-information-and-computer-science","tag-information-technology","tag-manoa-enhancing-student-success","tag-shidler-college-of-business","tag-student-recognition","tag-uh-cancer-center","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manoa-asru-hackathon-winners.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227285,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227282\/revisions\/227285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}