MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2016 | Page 21

focus on clinical applications

New App Aids In Recovery From Opioid Addiction
In developing “Hey,Charlie,” Emily Lindemer drew on her experience in the Center
Emily Lindemer didn’t plan to develop an app offering help for those
in recovery for opioid dependence.
She went to the hack-a-thon in
April—the MIT Hacking Medicine
“Grand Hack 2016”—with thoughts
of tackling some problem related to
Alzheimer’s disease. This is, after all,
her area of research as a graduate
student in the MGH Martinos Center. But when another hack-a-thon
participant made a pitch pertaining
to the opioid epidemic in Massa- Hey,Charlie co-founders Emily Lindemer and
chusetts and indeed across the U.S., Vinny Valant at HUBweek Demo Day
Lindemer had a proverbial “light addiction in changing their social
bulb moment.”
environment. Eventually dubbed
“Hey,Charlie,” the app lets you idenSomeone very close to her had been tify contacts who are not helpful to
suffering from opioid addiction for your recovery and, when you try to
years. As she watched him wrestle text or call them (or they try to text
with his addiction, quitting and re- or call you), asks you to take a molapsing time and again, she strug- ment to consider whether you really
gled with how she could help him.
want to talk to them. You can even
tell the app what places aren’t good
She had noticed something with for your recovery—and tag them ushis difficulties: “You can predict his ing your phone’s GPS technology—
relapses to a T just based on who so it can check in with you if you
he’s talking to,” she said. “He starts happen to get near those spots.
texting the wrong people and the
wrong people start driving up the The app won the Best Mental Health
driveway.” She thought of this again Hack at the hack-a-thon and, from
when she heard the pitch at the there, the idea of developing it for
hack-a-thon. What if she developed broad dissemination quickly took
an app that could help those in re- shape. Lindemer and her team concovery keep the bad influences at ducted more than 100 interviews
bay while also encouraging the posi- through online recovery forums to
tive interactions in their lives?
gain better understandings of how
social environments impact recovLindemer couldn’t shake this idea. ery and how those in recovery use
Over the next 48 hours of the hack- technology. After further developa-thon, she and her team developed ment, the app received the Postan app to help those suffering from Hack Progress Award from MIT

Hacking Medicine. Then came a
series of additional, invited presentations, culminating with the 2016
HUBweek Demo Day—an event in
Boston that brings together developers, entrepreneurs, clinicians and
others to show how the pairing of
technology and medicine is revolutionizing healthcare in Boston and
around the world. In the fall of 2016,
they were preparing to launch the
first version of “Hey,Charlie.”
With its debts to addiction research
and behavior modification strategies, the app is very much in line
with the broader focus of Lindemer’s
work—namely, improving health
through new understandings of the
brain—a focus that she’s honed in
her time in the Center.
“I’m always thinking about the
brain,” she said, “whether it’s with
regard to my research in the Center surrounding neuroimaging and
Alzheimer’s disease, or about basic
human behavior and why we do the
things that we do.
“Sometimes in science it’s easy to
get pigeonholed into the one thing
that you’re intensively doing on a
daily basis, but there are so many
avenues at the Center to get out of
this mindset. There is a lot of innovation that happens here, and being
around people who aren’t afraid to
push boundaries and explore the
unknown has deeply permeated
into my way of approaching science,
as well as many other endeavors.”