On May 16-18, a 48h Health Hackathon was organised at the EIT ICT Labs Stockholm CLC, gathering hard working hack teams, resisting the tempting sunny spring weather outside. Some solved it by taking their inspirational breaks outside but still making sure to take advantage of the excellent resources made available throughout the weekend.
The Health Hack Academy kicked-off already on May 9 when specific health challenges were presented to the participants who could also bring their own ideas to the hackathon. Seven teams were formed and they met up again on Friday May 16 to attack their challenges aided by healthcare experts, professional designers and business developers.
Inspirational talks kicked off the Hackathon - Christian Hilmersson from the Stockholm County Council shared the Health Innovation Platform where developers, designers and entrepreneurs get access to the technical information needed to design solutions that interact with available patient data. Andreas Silow, representing both the Stockholm diabetes association and a startup called Headlong, shared a new project method on how to build new health services in a ground-breaking user-centric way.
Flemingsberg Science Foundation (medtech innovation) had several professionals on call during the weekend and there were “doctor’s rounds” with a nurse, an illustrator, a business coach and UX experts who visited the teams to assist with their special competences. A couple of EIT ICT Labs Master School students participated bringing excellent technical skills and some practice in business modelling and development.
On Sunday, 18 May, it was time for a final key note speech which was delivered by Björn Söderberg, MyHealth24seven, providing an overview of the healthcare of tomorrow and some best practice to learn from. Finally the teams pitched and covered areas from motivating and supporting teenagers diagnosed with type1 diabetes to providing innovative solutions for assisting living and enhanced quality of life for elderly in their own homes.
All teams had worked hard and presented well but only four were selected to continue in the Health Hack Academy. This means another workshop in a week when the ideas will be taken into a prototyping phase. Before the final show down at the international Digital Health Days conference in August the teams will also get a special pitch training session.
See more about the Hackathon and Health Hack Academy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DigiHealthSthlm
About
Health Hack Academy is the new meeting place for corporate project scouts, entrepreneurs, business developers, hackers and gadget geeks, researchers, designers, students, patients, healthcare professionals, and others who are looking to transform the future of healthcare, selfcare and wellbeing. The goal of Health Hack Academy is to support and accelerate the creation of digital health startups through workshops and a hackathon with the finalists showcased at international Stockholm’s Digital │ Health Days 2014 conference.
Organised by Veryday, EIT ICT Labs, Stockholm Science City and Digital | Health Days
