 With forward pay from Appalachian Wireless, you'll avoid contracts and credit checks while taking advantage of some awesome perks like unlimited talk, text and three gigs of data for just $44.99 or with five gigs for a mere $59.99. Forward pay, that's today's Appalachian Wireless. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Shaping Our Appalachian Region conducted the first ever Appalachian Health Hackathon. The event kicked off Thursday and wrapped up Saturday at the Center for Rural Development in Somerset, Kentucky. A health hackathon brings those with different backgrounds together to collaborate and focus on a specific problem to create innovative ideas and solutions. This afternoon, teams presented solutions to obesity, diabetes and substance abuse to a panel of judges. We came together as individuals from varying organizations throughout Kentucky and we made teams based on common interests and we came up with problems and then solutions to those problems and then how we would go forward with implementing those solutions to those problems. So it's like a future problem-solving team for adults with real life problems. MIT's Hacking Medicine program has held more than 40 events worldwide. Now with the help of SOAR, this is the first time MIT has held a health hackathon in the region. It's really about a mindset and a process to solving problems that MIT brings to the table and it's at a high level that's what SOAR is trying to do in every aspect of Appalachia. This was focused on health but they bring it an approach to solving that problem. They really want you to start by identifying the problems, digging into the specific problem of something broad and then identifying the specific solution around that and understanding the market and customer and this approach is what we need in Appalachia because it drives innovation. We've got significant challenges. The hope of this weekend's health hackathon was to solve Eastern and Central Kentucky's biggest health care challenges by using multiple perspectives. Prizes for the weekend included up to $1,500 in cash, a Fitbit from Pikeville Medical Center, recognition and the potential to work with businesses and accelerators. Reporting in Somerset for EKB News, I'm Shelby Steele.