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Health hackathons are multidisciplinary events bringing together diverse stakeholders to solve key health challenges through a process of co-creation. Health hackathons have gained significant traction as sources of medical innovation globally. They carry particular significance for addressing health discrepancies in resource-limited settings, wher...
Citations
... These low project continuation rates were found to be present regardless of whether the hackathon event was positioned as individual learning, community-building, or entrepreneurial opportunity . Findings such as these lead to the argument that hackathon outcomes are typically not sustained beyond the hackathon event (Cobham et al., 2017;Mantzavinou et al., 2018;Trainer et al., 2016). ...
This article reports on a study examining the factors influencing post-hackathon project continuation in a company with presence in several African countries. The research was conducted as a case study, and focused on hackathon events held by the company between 2018 and 2020. The study identified three core factors that influenced the potential for project continuation after the corporate hackathons: (1) availability of financing; (2) team skills fit and diversity; and (3) degree of project integration into company operations. Where one or more of these elements was insufficiently present, then project continuation became less likely—and the likelihood of project discontinuation increased. The findings are of potential utility to corporate hackathon organisers seeking to increase the levels of project continuation—and, by, extension, return on investment—from their companies’ hackathon projects.
... 28 For example, if rapid discovery competitions lack organizational support, EDI stemming from them tends to result in "short-lived project ideation but no sustainable solutions. " 29 Local innovations that provide quick fixes without impacting organizational processes 30 can remain poorly documented and leave the precise value of EDI unclear. EDI stemming from spontaneous and uncoordinated employees' ideas can be unpredictable, which can undermine the order of the system in place. ...
Background: Employee-driven innovation (EDI) occurs when frontline actors in health
organizations use their firsthand experience to spur new ideas to transform care. Despite its increasing prevalence in health organizations, the organizational conditions under which EDI is operationalized have received little scholarly attention.
Methods: This scoping review identifies gaps and assembles existing knowledge on four questions: What is EDI in health organizations and which frontline actors are involved? What are the characteristics of the EDI process? What contextual factors enable or impede EDI? And what benefits does EDI bring to health organizations? We searched seven databases with keywords related to EDI in health organizations. After screening 1580 studies by title and abstract, we undertook full-text review of 453 articles, retaining 60 for analysis. We performed a descriptive and an inductive thematic analysis guided by the four questions.
Results: Findings reveal an heterogeneous literature. Most articles are descriptive (n=41). Few studies are conceptual and empirical (n=15) and four are conference papers. EDI was often described as a participatory, learning innovation process involving frontline clinical and non-clinical staff and managers. Majority EDI were top-down, often driven by the organization’s focus on participatory improvement and innovation and research-based initiatives. Five categories of methods is used in top-down EDI, two thirds of which includes a learning, a team and/or a digital component. Hybrid EDI often involves a team-based component. Bottom-up EDI emerged spontaneously from the work of frontline actors. Enablers, barriers and benefits of EDI are seen at macro, organizational, team and individual levels; some benefits spread to other health organizations and health systems.
Conclusion: This scoping review provides a comprehensive understanding of the
organizational conditions under which EDI is operationalized. It offers insights for researchers, health organizations and policy makers about how and why frontline actors’ involvement is crucial for the transformation of care.
Keywords: Scoping Study; Frontline Employees; Frontline Innovation; Bottom-Up Innovation; Health System
... While they were initially conducted as "problem-focused programming events" [20,21] concerned with software development (indeed, the term was coined by software developers in 1999 [17]), hackathons are now conducted to cover a range of technologies [20] and to promote innovative thinking to tackle civic and ecological issues [18,19]. These events provide opportunities for participants to collaborate and create networks that can last beyond the event itself [17], and documented tangible outcomes include the development of technical (prototypes [17,[22][23][24], bug fixes [22,25], product features [22]) and non-technical artefacts (e.g., visualizations [22,26,27], publications [22] and other new or improved documentation [28]), as well as intangible outcomes that include learning or acquiring new skills (e.g., code camps [17,18]) that can be applied to tackle real-world challenges [28][29][30][31], networking [19,28] and collaboration [32,33], entrepreneurship [19,34,35], and the generation of new knowledge, ideas [26,36] and increased awareness about hackathon themes [19,30,37]. ...
Background
Despite a growing movement toward a knowledge-user-driven research process, our understanding of the generation, implementation and evaluation of specific approaches in the integrated knowledge translation (iKT) toolbox that aim to engage health and healthcare knowledge users is limited. Health hackathons offer an innovative approach with potential to generate direct and indirect health-related outcomes benefitting participants, knowledge users and the broader population. In May 2019, our research team hosted Waterlupus, a health hackathon to improve the economic lives of individuals with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in Canada. Waterlupus was held with a multi-stakeholder group of 50 participants that included advocacy organization representatives, policy-makers, researchers, physicians, individuals with lived experience and students. While the hackathon generated viable solutions with the potential to positively impact the lives of individuals with SLE, understanding how participants perceived the hackathon as an iKT tool is critical in the planning and implementation of future iKT research.
Methods
Semi-structured in-depth telephone interviews were conducted with Waterlupus participants ( n = 13) between August and November 2019 to (1) explore participant experiences of the hackathon; (2) investigate participant-identified hackathon outcomes; and (3) elicit recommendations for future iKT research using health hackathons.
Results
Participants provided feedback on the format and organization of Waterlupus, and identified direct and indirect outcomes to knowledge users, students and researchers beyond the innovations generated at the event. While the majority ( n = 11) had never participated in a hackathon prior to Waterlupus, all 13 stated they would participate in future hackathons. Positive outcomes identified include connecting with students and other SLE stakeholders, the formation of professional and support networks, increased awareness of SLE, as well as the innovations generated. Participant recommendations for future health hackathons include the addition of stakeholders from industry or technology, and the need for clear and designated roles for stakeholders to ensure efficient use of resources.
Conclusions
This work contributes to a limited literature regarding the use of health hackathons for social innovation, and offers knowledge-user suggestions relevant to the implementation of future iKT events, and hackathons specifically.
... The little research that exists has a contradictory interpretation of the matter. Some even suggest that hackathon outcomes are not sustained at all [5], [10], [116], hinting at the uselessness of doing so. According to one survey, [94] 80% of hackathon participants expressed plans on continuing further development while only one third actually achieving in this. ...
... Coaching and mentoring, showcasing the artefact during an event [121], prizes [13], [116], releasing a production version of artefact [121], recruiting new team members [13] and writing grants [13]. ...
This thesis work is based on Systematic Literature Review on hackathon like events. Thesis research focuses on outcome sustainability and remote participation during these events. A general overview of hackathon related research topics and coverage relevance have been conducted with potential future research suggestions in mind. Selected material has been classified during the in-depth reading process and focus-related observations recorded for further analysis. The most notable observations are the following: 1) Publications on post- event walkthrough are the most common ones, 2) There is a decent amount of research on motivation during the event, although it mainly focuses on participant motivators, 3) Hackathons are commonly viewed as part of the learning process that in many cases have similarities with Project-Based Learning and/or emphasise the importance of teamwork, 4) Event outcome sustainability is little researched and has contradictory findings as well as 5) Remote participation in hackathon like event is almost not studied and is mostly limited to subjective sidenotes in research focusing on other subjects.
... The sustainability of these outcomes has not been studied extensively so far despite organizers and participants investing considerable resources to prepare, run, and follow-up on an event. Previous research even suggests that hackathon outcomes are often not sustained at all [11,31,49] rendering the investment of resources useless. In order to develop a systematic understanding of how to sustain hackathon outcomes it is first necessary though to understand which outcomes can be reasonably expected. ...
... Tangible outcomes may also include non-technical artifacts such as visualizations [40,43,49], new or improved documentation [46] and publications [49]. 4 O6 Ideas [40,47] O7 Entrepreneurship [11,31] O8 Fostering existing enterprise [10,19] O9 Fostering awareness about hackathon theme [2,46,50] Intangible hackathon outcomes. ...
... Both networking and learning can subsequently lead to participants developing new ideas [40,47]. Other intangible outcomes may include entrepreneurship [11,31] (i.e. the creation of new startups), fostering existing enterprises [19], and fostering awareness about the theme of a hackathon [2,50]. ...
Hackathons are time-bounded events where participants gather in teams to develop projects that interest them. Such events have been adopted in various domains to generate innovative solutions, foster learning, build and expand communities and to tackle civic and ecological issues. While research interest has also grown subsequently, most studies focus on singular events in specific domains. A systematic overview of the current state of the art is currently missing. Such an overview is however crucial to further study the hackathon phenomenon, understand its underlying mechanisms and develop support for hackathon organizers, in particular related to the sustainability of hackathon outcomes. This paper fills that gap by reporting on the results of a systematic literature review thus providing an overview of potential hackathon outcomes, design aspects and connections between them that have been addressed in prior work. Our findings also outline gaps in prior work e.g. related to the lack of work focusing on hackathon outcomes other than hackathon projects.
... Several significant challenges threaten successful project implementation in international, collaborative design settings, including technology adoption and dissemination barriers [3][4][5][6][7] . Arguably the most significant challenge for international collaborative design projects is design sustainability. ...
... Recognizing the unique challenges of international, collaborative designparticularly design for low resource settings-experts across many disciplines have established guidelines for working with communities towards design innovations 8 . These guidelines collectively emphasize the importance of involving community stakeholders in every phase of the design process, including understanding local availability of resources, identifying needs of local significance, and most importantly, asking appropriate questions to illicit appropriate design feedback 3 . Though these guidelines have been traditionally targeted towards design of health technology, they provide critical insight into sustainability of design projects in every area. ...
... It is imperative to involve not only all the stakeholders, ranging from the child and parents to the paediatric nurse, but people from other professions as well. 9 While this idea is not new per se (participatory action research has a long history), it is still not being fully used in the academic medicine community of Pakistan. This paper focuses on the use of unconventional means of stakeholder inclusion to promote healthcare innovation. ...
... Promising 'hacks' from Uganda include a digital infusion monitor and control device, a wireless physiological monitor and an automatic surgical suction pump controller. 9 In Pakistan, the first medical hackathon was held in March 2016 in Karachi by an organisation called the Elaj Trust. It was during this hackathon that an application called 'Ambusolve' was pitched to decrease the time required to dispatch an ambulance. ...
Standardisation in paediatric medicine may have the unintended effect of stifling innovation. Thinking outside the box becomes even more important in low-income to middle-income countries like Pakistan, where a large paediatric population requires healthcare. In addition, there is always a lack of funds, making an innovative, low-cost and high impact solution all the more necessary. While regulation and formal research is an integral part of the process, the local synthesis of a solution must start with a creative idea. To address the dearth of avenues promoting lateral thinking relevant to biomedicine and healthcare among students and faculty, the Critical Creative Innovative Thinking forum was formed at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, by a group consisting of students and faculty in 2014. The primary objective of the forum was to provide an arena conducive to lateral thinking and to equip biomedical professionals with the skill set to enable and promote creativity and innovation. This paper seeks to outline those efforts and discuss their potential impact on paediatric care for resource-limited settings.
... Often the end of the event signals the dispersion of ideas, concepts and publics. Mantzavinou and Ranger[19]acknowledge that hackathons can generate short-lived excitement but lack a way to find sustainable solutions that create real impact. They understand hackathons as a 'launching point' to inspire further work and collaboration, and we endeavored to ensure that our hackathon was a launching point, as opposed to a fleeting event. ...
... Motivated by the criticism that conventional hackathons do not create lasting impact[19], and only generate short-lived attention, we extended and rethought the traditional hackathon format. By holding a series of engagements with stakeholders after the hackathon, we have been able to scaffold the conventional hackathon format so that expert stakeholders who could not attend the event were able to maintain a valuable involvement in appraising the design outcomes, and provide further ideas and imagine more appropriate design iterations for the self-harm context. ...
... Despite the increasing popularity of hackathons, they still tend to attract a majority of technologists, and those with no technological expertise feel that they do not possess the skillset to attend and make valuable contributions to idea generation and prototype development[19]. By extending the hackathon with the stakeholder critiques, we ensured that non-technologists were able to have a tangible involvement in the design outcomes. ...
In this paper we explore the opportunities, challenges and best practices around designing technologies for those affected by self-harm. Our work contributes to a growing HCI literature on mental health and wellbeing, as well as understandings of how to imbue appropriate value-sensitivity within the digital design process in these contexts. The first phase of our study was centred upon a hackathon during which teams of designers were asked to conceptualise and prototype digital products or services for those affected by self-harm. We discuss how value-sensitive actions and activities, including engagements with those with lived experiences of self-harm, were used to scaffold the conventional hackathon format in such a challenging context. Our approach was then extended through a series of critical engagements with clinicians and charity workers who provided appraisal of the prototypes and designs. Through analysis of these engagements we expose a number of design challenges for future HCI work that considers self-harm; moreover we offer insight into the role of stakeholder critiques in extending and rethinking hackathons as a design method in sensitive contexts.
... Health hackathons have gained significant traction as sources of medical innovation globally (DePasse et al., 2014;Mantzavinou & Ranger, 2014). Hackathons have the potential to deliver solutions where there are health discrepancies among citizens and where resources are limited. ...
The Hackathon concept is attracting interest as a vehicle for participatory development in both Health and Information systems. Publically available datasets, cloud based data storage, and increasingly sophisticated analytical methods, combined with user friendly development tools for mobile devices are inspiring innovation in the participatory medicine space. This has the potential to disrupt traditional methods and deliver solutions more rapidly, and in a form more likely to meet requirements. In health applications this involves putting the patient and their supports at the centre of design. This work contributes to solving the challenges involved in bringing a diverse cohort of designers, developers, problem owners, healthcare providers, patients, and citizens together to solve user-driven self-care problems using technology. We use a descriptive case study approach focussing on two weekend-long hackathons dubbed “Health Hackathon: Solving Self-care”. We gather thick data from multiple sources according to the process defined by Geertz (1994) first, to provide a rich picture of the role of hackathons in participatory medicine and second, to contribute evidence to the practise of running a hackathon. Some key originalities of our work include seeking more candid responses via self-serve interviews. Through this, controversially, we noted a marked emphasis on the creative process over concerns for privacy and ethics around the personal data cloud created by hackathon products. We build on existing theories of participatory medicine and emerging methodologies for conducting hackathons to provide evidence of the efficacy of the hacking approach both in terms of outcome and team dynamics. Through interviews, observation, twitter feeds and a pre-survey, we identify a number of success factors including (1) group size, (2) maturity of the idea, (3) level of involvement of a mentor, and (4) involvement of students. In addition we identify five skills identified by successful health hackathon participants; knowledge, patient focussed skills, analytical skills, software design skills and professional perspective. In common with previous studies we find that there are considerable social benefits that accrue in running a hackathon. Participants meet new people and learn first-hand of the challenges and opportunities provided by the skill sets and work environments of others. This work builds on the existing body of research concerning hackathons and in particular work in the context of participatory medicine
