e-Health 2015 to Culminate with Hacking Health Design Challenge
#HHDesign Flagship Event to Take Place March 30 - June 2
With: Anya Kravets,
Hacking Health
2014 and 2015 have been huge years for digital health: building new solutions to improve and change the healthcare system is more important than ever, and collaboration among various sectors bringing passionate and talented individuals plays a central role. Similarly to any other industry – if there are more diverse people developing more diverse ideas, then we will see more diverse solutions. Perhaps, for this very reason, we are seeing more founders coming to healthcare from outside the healthcare system – to make a tangible difference in this exciting field of immense opportunities.
Canada has become a digital health playground for many, including grassroots movements such as Hacking Health – designed to empower, unite and help grow much-needed healthcare tech solutions. Launched here and now taking over the digital health world across the globe, Hacking Health aims to improve healthcare by inviting technology creators and healthcare professionals to collaborate on realistic, human-centric solutions to front-line problems.
Whether transforming kids’ health or exploring the topics of virtual care and telemedicine, collaborating on solutions for the mixing of healthcare and technical professionals adds unique value and challenge to Hacking Health events: medical professionals learn how to adapt their ideas for a technical audience, and hackers – make extra effort to understand unfamiliar problems and help non-technical domain experts refine their ideas.
This time, Hacking Health partnered with the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association (COACH), Canada Health Infoway, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) to deliver an eight-week design challenge culminating in a demo showcase and prizes to be awarded at the e-Health 2015: Making Connections conference May 31 – June 2, 2015, in Toronto. The Hacking Health Design Challenge is powered by Gevity, with Microsoft acting as the judging sponsor. Thanks to these sponsors, more than 250 participants have been working for weeks on their solutions and will be revealing their creations at the e-Health conference.
“Hosting the Hacking Health Design Challenge at Canada's largest eHealth conference enables the participating teams to co-develop, validate, test, and form important partnerships with key stakeholders in the digital health community," says Hadi Salah, co-founder of Hacking Health, "We have fantastic partners on-board that are committing to take the developed solutions and prototypes to citizens and patients, moving these projects forward long after the challenge concludes. This is a great opportunity to see the groundbreaking solutions that design, tech, entrepreneurial and healthcare communities can build together."
Since the kick-off of the Hacking Health Design Challenge on March 30, participating teams have been working virtually to co-develop solutions and convene at the national eHealth conference hosted by COACH, Canada Health Infoway, and the CIHI. Starting with an evening reception on May 31 and followed by 48 hours of final tweaking, validation, and testing, the teams will then partake in a demo competition in which they will be judged, with winners to be announced shortly after, on June 2.
Every day, more of Canada’s health care system goes digital. While for patient empowerment, the technological capability of a solution doesn't always determine adoption or engagement, the continued focus on collaborative, patient-centric, multi-channel approach is key – to make healthcare better and more effective for all of us.
For more information, visit www.hackinghealthdesignchallenge.com, www.hackinghealth.ca, or follow the conversation online via #HHDesign and #eHealth2015.
