Health-hackathon to ideate innovative solutions for patients with asthma

Aim: To describe the development and execution of a health-hackathon to generate ideas for good asthma care. Method: This health-hackathon was to address the ideate (third) stage of Stanford’s d: school Design Thinking Process, 1. empathise, 2. define, 3. ideate, 4. Prototype, and 5. Test (Plattner 2023). This event took place over two weeks, and was opened to students in tertiary education and working adults. The health-hackathon event flow was as follows: 1. An initial briefing to provide information on the tasks, followed by a sharing session by both mentors and patients on asthma as to provide information on the disease and patients’ needs; 2. Three days for teams to submit a 300 word abstract; 3. Selection of 12 teams which will participate in the final Hackathon event; 4. Allocation of a mentor, who was a doctor or advanced practice nurse; 5. Teams to meet-up with the mentor virtually one week before the event to present their ideas; and 6. Final presentation. An online survey was given to the participants to obtain their feedback on the event. Results: Out of the 31 teams that registered for the health-hackathon, 12 teams comprising of 54 participants were selected. Thirty-three participants completed the online feedback form. Three quarters of the participants reported that this was their first time participating in a hackathon event. More than half the participants found the hackathon duration to be just right, while three participants (9.1%) found it too long and 13 (29.4%) found it too short. The mentoring session was found to be very helpful or helpful by 90.6% of the participants. Conclusion: Two weeks is a suitable duration for participants to generate ideas on good asthma care for a health-hackathon, at their own time. Mentoring sessions is an essential part of the health-hackathon.