Alzheimer's is the world's most common form of dementia, affecting 55 million people globally - a number set to triple by 2050. It erases memory, identity, and independence, while placing an invisible but crushing burden on families and caregivers. Despite decades of research, there is still no cure, no way to reverse it, and diagnosis often comes years too late to make a real difference.
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ABOUT INFUSE
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OVERVIEW
PRAXIS is a healthcare innovation hackathon by AIIMS Bathinda bringing together teams to develop practical solutions that enhance patient care, strengthen medical systems, and drive real-world clinical impact.
ROUND 1 | ONLINE SCREENING
Problem statements are released online. Teams submit a Presentation/Abstract for a drug, device, app, or service that solves a meaningful healthcare challenge.
ROUND 2 | OFFLINE PITCH
Shortlisted teams pitch live before the audience and judges. Strong ideas need both clear impact and a workable path to execution.
PROBLEM STATEMENT 1
BEFORE
I FORGET
Alzheimer's affects 55 million people globally, erasing memory, identity, and independence while placing a crushing, invisible burden on families and caregivers.
Detailed brief
Before I Forget
MedHackathon 2026 - Problem Statement
The disease that steals a person twice
Alzheimer's disease - the crisis hiding in plain sight
Why is this so hard to solve?
Too late, too slow
Brain changes begin 15 to 20 years before symptoms appear. By the time someone is diagnosed, massive irreversible damage has already occurred.
A caregiver crisis in the making
Over 60% of care is provided by unpaid family members. Caregiver burnout, depression, and financial ruin are routine - but nearly invisible to the system.
Stigma and silence
Many families treat cognitive decline as a private shame. Patients hide symptoms, families delay seeking help, and earlier conversations never happen.
No scalable care model
Current dementia care is fragmented, expensive, and built for hospitals not the home, the community, or the long arc of the disease.
The big question for you
If a cure is still decades away, how do we make the journey more humane, more dignified, and less devastating for patients, families, and the healthcare systems they depend on? And can we catch the disease early enough for interventions to actually matter?
Where your ideas could make a difference
Can we identify cognitive decline earlier through speech, behaviour, or simple screening before clinical symptoms appear?
How do we reduce the physical and emotional toll on the 50+ million unpaid caregivers who are themselves a hidden patient population?
Can we design environments, routines, or tools that help people with Alzheimer's retain independence, safety, and a sense of self for longer?
How do we shift public conversation around dementia so families seek help sooner and communities become more inclusive for those living with it?
Can we redesign how dementia care is delivered making it more continuous, community-based, and financially sustainable at scale?
Your challenge: Pick one moment in the Alzheimer's journey - diagnosis, daily care, caregiver burnout, or end of life and design something that makes it meaningfully better. A process, a tool, a campaign, a policy, or a community model.
PROBLEM STATEMENT 2
SPACE
PHARMACOLOGY
In space, standard drug doses stop being reliable. Microgravity changes absorption, distribution, metabolism, clearance, and even shelf life - turning every prescription into a mission-risk decision.
Detailed brief
Space Pharmacology
MedHackathon 2026 - Problem Statement
Prescribing in the void: why drugs do not work the same way in space
Microgravity rewrites the rules of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics - and every drug dosage chart on Earth may be wrong the moment a crew leaves orbit
Every drug dose ever calculated for human use was derived from data collected at 1g. Pharmacokinetics - the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs - depends on physiological parameters that microgravity fundamentally alters: fluid distribution, cardiac output, gastrointestinal motility, hepatic blood flow, renal clearance, and body composition. In deep space, a crew relies on a fixed formulary with no capacity for restocking. If those drugs behave unpredictably, the consequences are irreversible and potentially mission-ending.
Four mechanisms by which microgravity breaks pharmacology
Altered absorption kinetics
Microgravity slows gastrointestinal motility and alters gastric emptying, reducing the rate and extent of oral drug absorption. Narrow-window drugs are most vulnerable to these delays.
Redistribution of body fluid compartments
Fluid shifts toward the upper body change the volume of distribution for both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs, while plasma volume contracts and alters free drug fraction unpredictably.
Impaired hepatic and renal clearance
Reduced cardiac output and altered splanchnic circulation can impair first-pass metabolism and slow drug clearance, especially for renally cleared antibiotics and other critical therapies.
Altered target receptor sensitivity
Even when a drug reaches therapeutic plasma levels, its biological effect may still shift because chronic stress, bone remodelling, and receptor-level adaptation change pharmacodynamics.
The compounding problem of drug degradation
A Mars mission carries medications that must remain potent for 3+ years while exposed to continuous ionising radiation, humidity swings, and thermal cycling. Studies on ISS medication samples have already shown significant potency loss well before labelled expiry dates.
Where your ideas could make a difference
Can physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models be adapted for microgravity-specific fluid shifts, altered cardiac output, and modified hepatorenal function to generate mission-phase dosing adjustments?
How do we reformulate essential medications using radiation-resistant excipients, lyophilisation, or novel delivery systems to maintain potency across a 3-year deep-space mission?
Can miniaturised, crew-operable biosensing platforms monitor plasma drug levels, enzyme activity, or renal clearance markers in microgravity and enable adaptive dosing decisions?
Given mass and volume limits, how do we design a deep-space medication formulary with the fewest drugs, broadest coverage, greatest stability, and most predictable behaviour?
Microgravity pharmacokinetic models could also help Earth-based patients with altered fluid compartments - from sepsis to heart failure - where standard dosing is equally unreliable.
Your challenge: Select one pharmacokinetic or pharmacodynamic domain - absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, or receptor-level drug response - and propose a clinically grounded solution to unreliable drug behaviour in microgravity. It could be a monitoring tool, a reformulation approach, a dosing protocol, or a novel delivery system that restores therapeutic reliability beyond the reach of any pharmacy or lab.
PROBLEM STATEMENT 3
ANTIMICROBIAL
RESISTANCE
Drug-resistant infections are outpacing the medicines designed to stop them. AMR is now a systems problem spanning hospitals, prescribing, diagnostics, agriculture, and public behaviour.
Detailed brief
Antimicrobial Resistance
MedHackathon 2026 - Problem Statement
The silent pandemic we are losing
Antibiotic resistance - medicine's most urgent unsolved problem
Every year, drug-resistant infections claim 1.27 million lives globally - more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. By 2050, antimicrobial resistance could kill 10 million people annually and cost the global economy $100 trillion. The antibiotics we rely on are losing their power, and the pipeline to replace them is nearly dry.
Why is this happening?
Overuse and misuse
Antibiotics are overprescribed for viral infections and heavily overused in livestock agriculture, accelerating resistance evolution.
Broken incentives
Developing a new antibiotic can take more than a decade and enormous capital, while companies earn far more from chronic disease drugs, so the pipeline stays thin.
Diagnostic gaps
Identifying the right drug for the right bug still takes too long, so clinicians often start with broad-spectrum antibiotics as a guess and resistance worsens.
Awareness and behaviour
Patients demand antibiotics, stop courses early, and self-medicate. Without behaviour change, even new drugs will lose effectiveness quickly.
The big question for you
If we cannot create new antibiotics fast enough, how do we use the ones we have more wisely? And can we design systems, incentives, tools, or behaviours that slow the spread of resistance and buy time for science to catch up?
Where your ideas could make a difference
How might we help doctors prescribe more precisely, with better real-time decision support?
Can we redesign antibiotic use in farming, where a huge share of the world's antibiotics are consumed?
How do we change public behaviour around antibiotic use, completion of courses, and self-medication?
What policy models or economic incentives could revive antibiotic R&D or reduce overprescription?
Can faster, cheaper diagnostics identify the exact pathogen and resistance profile so the right drug is used the first time?
Your challenge: Identify a specific, real-world problem inside the antibiotic resistance ecosystem. Propose a solution - a system, tool, policy, campaign, or redesigned process - that is feasible, human-centred, and makes a measurable dent.
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