At Monday’s Bouvé Dean’s Seminar Series, Judith Salerno of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) presented a challenge to Northeastern students and their peers around the nation.

The Go Viral for Improving Healthcare challenge asks health sciences students to collaborate with  students in other fields like computer sciences and engineering to develop web or mobile apps that could impact the health of their communities.

I know Northeastern students are already well versed in this kind of work: from the iPhone app that detects blood contents like sugar and sodium, which Matt Dubach designed along with biology professor Heather Clark, to the SQUID shirt developed by an interdisciplinary team of students that tracks physical activity and uploads the data to an Android app.

Last year a team of undergrads from NYU won the contest with their SleepBot mobile app, which detects sleep quality by tracking nighttime body movements as you toss and turn.

This year, the winners of the challenge will be awarded a $10K prize along with an on-stage presentation at the IOM’s Health “Datapalooza” in DC, June 5-6. Last year’s winners also had the bonus prize of job offers and commercialization of their app by a major company.

So, get to it Huskies. I want to be writing about your apps soon!