AnatoLearn wins Rep. Kathy Manning’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in North Carolina’s Sixth District

When asked what inspired the creation of AnatoLearn, the students said, “There is currently a major shortage of healthcare workers. In fact, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, ‘the United States could see an estimated shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care’. As the pandemic has shown, healthcare workers are essential to the wellbeing of all, and it is imperative that we have enough people interested in filling these roles. Since the younger generation of today will be the doctors of tomorrow, we wanted to educate elementary and middle schoolers about basic anatomy and interest them in pursuing a healthcare career in the future.

One of the reasons we chose to develop this application is that it merges our respective interests, medicine and computer science.

 I (Ayush) am primarily interested in going to medical or dental school in the future. I wish I learned more about the basics of the field when I was younger, but there weren’t many resources available to do so. I wanted to create AnatoLearn with the intent of giving others interested in the medical field a fun, informative chance to learn about the basics of the human body. Furthermore, I wanted to learn more about coding and computer science, since I know that this is a very relevant skill in all fields. Helping develop AnatoLearn has allowed me to learn more about this growing skill, while also applying my passion for the health sciences.

I (Anika), am hoping to pursue a career in computer science in the future. I have always been in awe of the opportunities that code provides with its rapid growth within the past few decades. As my interest lies largely in web and app development, this competition and application idea was a perfect fit for me, allowing me to expand my knowledge of code and touch on a topic I had not worked with as much before, game development. This application also gave me the ability to be able to indirectly have an impact on a current social issue. COVID-19 opened my eyes to the lack of healthcare workers in America and around the world, and it was immediately a topic I wanted to address with the app. To carry out our impact, we plan to incorporate the game into outreach initiatives with elementary and middle schools within our county, with the support of STEM clubs we run.”