Healthcare wonks and tech geeks went head-to-head this week at the Coding the Future of Healthcare conference, as they brainstormed solutions to problems faced by frontline healthcare providers.
Brought together by the
Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), participants worked to find ways to use digital technology to shrink distances between patients and professionals, streamlining services so that the best healthcare might be right in your pocket.
“Telemedicine continues to help improve the delivery and management of care throughout our province every day,” says OTN CEO Ed Brown. “Tailored and integrated solutions will provide Ontario with the tools it needs to create a sustainable, patient-centered healthcare system."
The confab is also hosted the
Hacking Health Design Challenge, an concept which has seen 17 incarnations, both in Canada and abroad, since it was founded in Montreal in 2012. The challenge puts healthcare professionals, designers and engineers together to wrestle with ways to digitally solve everyday problems. The teams now have eight weeks to produce a demo to be showcased at the
National eHealth Conference at the end of May.
“We want to see what comes out of an environment where people who have different sets of skills, but who don’t typically talk to each other on a day-to-day basis, work together creatively,” says Hadi Salah, life sciences industry analyst with MaRS Market Intelligence and a co-founder of Hacking Health. “The idea is not about creating businesses, but solving problems. What happens is up to the teams. We’ve had projects drop off and not get picked up. We’ve had projects that have gone commercial. We’ve had a project that went from inception to acquisition within six months of the hackathon. And we’ve had a project where a hospital has taken on as its own.”
The conference hacking event was sold out. Though OTN had planned for about 100 participants, about 230 hackers signed up.
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Hadi Salah