Hackathons are competitions in which teams composed of students with different backgrounds and skills cooperate to formulate a solution to a common task. The methodology undermining hackathons is the design thinking: starting from a needs analysis of the final beneficiaries, teams will collaborate to come up with ideas, and eventually elaborating a final project to solve the problems detected. For these reasons, this kind of competition represent an important occasion to stimulate students in putting into practice their technical and problem-solving skills, but also their abilities in cooperation and interaction. After all, the combination of hard and soft skills applied to a real-life problem represents the strength of the hackathons, allowing participants to experiment a form of active learning.
On November 12th and 13th, “Generation HealthTech: Digital Solutions for Digital Healthcare”, the Italian national hackathon, will take place at bioPmed – Piedmont Health Innovation Cluster, in Collereto Giacosa, Piedmont. The participants have been selected from EQF 3 to EQF 7 courses in both healthcare and IT/ICT studies. The aim of the competition is to help students in understanding the needs of healthcare system and allowing them to be part of its innovation. The introduction of IT solutions, indeed, supports the everyday job of the health professionals, bridging the gap between what is needed by patients and what can be implemented by the system.
Each team competing in the hackathon will be composed by 6 persons coming from different training institutions. Trainers will act as facilitators, and in the meantime 13 mentors, chosen among experts, entrepreneurs, councillors, and educators, will help the teams in developing their solutions. At the end of the design phase, teams are asked to present their ideas through a pitch that mentors will evaluate, taking into account also the group dynamics put into place during the previous phases. Mentors will indeed assess teams on key competences of lifelong learning, according to the European Commission framework LifeComp (https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/lifecomp_en). Then, a dedicated panel of 5 judges, selected among project partners and key stakeholders of digital healthcare, will evaluate the proposed solutions focusing on: originality and innovation; feasibility and transferability; systematic vision; comprehensiveness and completeness.
In order to spread even more the possibility to take part to the digital transition of healthcare system, and to involve and stimulate students from all over Europe, on March 13th and 14th an international online hackathon will occur and it will be open to all the schools interested. Further information can be found on the website of the project – Stay tuned and contact the partners to participate to the event! (www.careaboutit.eu)
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