On May 9th it is time for the Health Hack Academy 2014 kick-off. Whether you already have an idea ready to revolutionize healthcare; want to develop the next super app, keeping people healthy or are eager to understand how your creativity can help solve demanding health challenges, make sure to be there.
Health Hack Academy is an innovation and development program that can take you from idea generation to the stage of a global conference where you’ll pitch to international investors. The idea is to develop the hackathon concept to the next level. The program includes a kick-off with an ideation workshop defining needs among care providers, patients and companies; a 48h hackathon and two additional workshops helping you to further develop your idea, product or service. On May 9th it’s kick-off time.
One of the organizers of Health Hack Academy 2014 is Veryday, one of the world’s top-ranking design and innovation companies and winner of Red Dot Design Team of the Year 2014. We had the great fortune to ask Lennart Andersson, Director Interaction Design, a few questions about his and Veryday’s engagement in the program.
What is your role in Health Hack Academy 2014?
- I’m the project leader for Health Hack Academy at Veryday. We want to play a key role in initiating and supporting digital health initiatives to stimulate innovations and businesses. With long experience within healthcare we have learned that uncovering deep insights about both patients and caregivers is key to be innovative. But we also learned that people are incredibly creative and knowledgeable if they are given the ability to articulate it. With Health Hack Academy we aim to gather people with different backgrounds and support them with our experience and methods to stimulate co-creation and new innovative ideas and solutions.
What are the strengths of the health hack academy concept?
- The Health Hack Academy is a great event helping to kick-start new pioneering innovations. People with different backgrounds can together provide a more holistic view on the challenges and bring different thinking to the teams. The Health Hack Academy brings together the fun and hands-on excitement of a hackathon with a supportive environment of peers and mentors. The finalists will be further trained at prototyping, storytelling and how to make a pitch in front of potential investors or customers. It’s a great place to meet interesting people, potential business partners and mentors for your ideas.
Health care professionals often complain that technology and IT-systems are not at all user friendly. What do you think is the reason? What are the technology providers doing wrong?
- Well, the technology providers are good at providing technology, but in general not at understanding the deeper needs and drivers of their customers and users. Often they don’t even understand they have users that are very different from each other. Still companies underestimate how important the users experience of a product is and only discover it when it’s too late. You can’t start thinking of usability and the experience of the product late in the process; it has to be designed in from the start. By involving key users and stakeholders early in the design process and regularly test with users you will early realize what’s a good idea and what’s not.
In the best of worlds, what would the outcome of the program be?
- The best outcome would be to find that our participants have learned to think outside the box and work in new ways. We also hope that they’ve engaged with inspiring new people and expanded their network. Ultimately we hope to see a few strong ideas with a potential to go to market.
Health Hack Academy is a joint project organized by partners interested in developing the digital health scene: Veryday, EIT ICT Labs, Stockholm Science City and Digital | Health Days. Health Hack Academy welcomes both experienced hackers and those who have never participated in a hackathon. The event will encourage people to learn, engage in conversations, share information and work with others to solve today’s health challenges in a hands-on way. Participation is free of charge and we do not claim any stake in your future ideas or startups.
More information about Health Hack Academy, program and registration: www.digitalhealthdays.se/hha