Less Noise, More Hacking: How to Deploy Principles From Mit's Hacking Medicine to Accelerate Health Care

Abstract

Medical technology offers enormous potential for scalable medicine-to improve the quality and access in health care while simultaneously reducing cost. However, current medical device innovation within companies often only offers incremental advances on existing products, or originates from engineers with limited knowledge of the clinical complexities. We describe how the Hacking Medicine Initiative, based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an innovative "healthcare hackathon" approach, bringing diverse teams together to rapidly validate clinical needs and develop solutions. Hackathons are based on three core principles; emphasis on a problem-based approach, cross-pollination of disciplines, and "pivoting" on or rapidly iterating on ideas. Hackathons also offer enormous potential for innovation in global health by focusing on local needs and resources as well as addressing feasibility and cultural contextualization. Although relatively new, the success of this approach is clear, as evidenced by the development of successful startup companies, pioneering product design, and the incorporation of creative people from outside traditional life science backgrounds who are working with clinicians and other scientists to create transformative innovation in health care.

How do the design features of health hackathons contribute to participatory medicine?

“…A hackathon follows the same process regardless of the topic (DePasse et al, 2014;Komssi et al, 2015), making available several opportunities for research data to be collected. Table 1 shows how these opportunities were used to gather data.…”

“…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.…”

“…Individuals usually pitch the ideas and self-organised groups usually work on the solutions (Jones et al, 2015). The development of a solution is treated as a competition in which the group with the best prototype wins (sometimes a monetary prize, sometimes mentoring and assistance with taking the product to market) (Angelidis et al, 2016;DePasse et al, 2014;Komssi et al, 2015). Health care has historically shifted from a paternalistic approach (where clinicians and other healthcare providers were privileged and patients were passive recipients of care) to a systems approach (Bragazzi, 2013).…”

“…A run sheet was designed for the weekend's schedule, based on the process described by Komssi et al (2015) and DePasse et al (2014) and hackathon hosts whom KD interviewed while planning the 2015 event, e.g. two UK NHS hackathon hosts ("NHS Hack Day," 2015).…”

“…Groups were 'failing early, and pivoting fast' as described by DePasse et al (2014), changing direction to what could be more successful. The challenges from the mentors appeared to unsettle group members.…”