Health Hackathons

Institutional obstacles to clinical translation of novel technologies frequently prevent bench research advances from reaching patients. Training in rapid innovation methods is not broadly accessible to most clinicians and researchers, and structured opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation of innovations addressing clinical needs remain relatively uncommon. MIT Hacking Medicine is a student, academic, and community led innovation group that uses systems-oriented “healthcare hacking” to address the challenges in innovation adoption. By connecting diverse minds across the healthcare ecosystem to solve significant healthcare challenges, this has led to the development of new medical devices, digital health tools, and solutions improving patient experience. To foster this process, MIT Hacking Medicine brings together engineers, scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, and designers to collaborate around shared interests, and develop novel solutions over a 2-day hackathon with potential for greater impact in the healthcare industry. Participants are trained to address needs from the perspective of multiple stakeholders and emphasize utility and implementation viability of proposed solutions. By following this outlook, over the past 5 years, MIT Hacking Medicine has facilitated over 80 hackathons and healthcare design thinking events across 11 countries and 9 US states. Our largest annual event brought together 500+ participants representing 320 distinct healthcare organizations from 22 different countries. Teams coming out of our events have had successes joining prestigious accelerators (e.g., TechStars, Y Combinator, Healthbox, and Rock Health), raising significant investment funding, and partnering with healthcare institutions or companies towards implementing their hack ideas. To date, we are proud to say we have helped launch nearly 20 active companies that have raised over $120 M in financing. Our efforts were recently honored with a 2016 Stanford MedicineX Healthcare Design award, in the category of Education in Healthcare. The MIT Hacking Medicine model is a method to integrate collaboration and training in rapid innovation techniques into academic centers, corporations, and non-profit organizations. Built upon a systems approach to healthcare innovation, the time-compressed but expertly guided nature of the events could enable more widely accessible preliminary training in systems-level innovation methodology, as well as creating a structured opportunity for interdisciplinary congregation and collaboration.