Teaching Principles of Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Through Hackathons: Case Study and Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

Background Innovation and entrepreneurship training are increasingly recognized as being important in medical education. However, the lack of faculty comfort with the instruction of these concepts as well as limited scholarly recognition for this work has limited the implementation of curricula focused on these skills. Furthermore, this lack of familiarity limits the inclusion of practicing physicians in health care innovation, where their experience is valuable. Hackathons are intense innovation competitions that use gamification principles to increase comfort with creative thinking, problem-solving, and interpersonal collaboration, but they require further exploration in medical innovation. Objective To address this, we aimed to design, implement, and evaluate a health care hackathon with 2 main goals: to improve emergency physician familiarity with the principles of health care innovation and entrepreneurship and to develop innovative solutions to 3 discrete problems facing emergency medicine physicians and patients. Methods We used previously described practices for conducting hackathons to develop and implement our hackathon (HackED!). We partnered with the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Stanford School of Biodesign, and the Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) to lend institutional support and expertise in health care innovation to our event. We determined a location, time frame, and logistics for the competition and settled on 3 use cases for teams to work on. We planned to explore the learning experience of participants within a pragmatic paradigm and complete an abductive thematic analysis using data from a variety of sources. Results HackED! took place from October 1-3, 2022. In all, 3 teams developed novel solutions to each of the use cases. Our investigation into the educational experience of participants suggested that the event was valuable and uncovered themes suggesting that the learning experience could be understood within a framework from entrepreneurship education not previously described in relation to hackathons. Conclusions Health care hackathons appear to be a viable method of increasing physician experience with innovation and entrepreneurship principles and addressing complex problems in health care. Hackathons should be considered as part of educational programs that focus on these concepts.

Designathons in health research: a global systematic review

“…We retrieved 127 publications from additional searches (ie, citation searching and the complementary open call), with a further 11 publications included in this review. In total, we included 42 studies in this review,7 8 18–57 with 39 studies (93%) focusing on developing social innovations 7 8 18–20 22–42 44–53 55–57. The PRISMA flowchart is presented in online supplemental figure 1.…”

“…In total, 41 studies (98%) reported the number of designathon participants 7 8 18–53 55–57. The median number of individuals participating in designathons was 49 (IQR 34–90, range 6–434), and the median number of teams was 8 (IQR 5–14.5, range 2–40).…”

“…The median number of individuals participating in designathons was 49 (IQR 34–90, range 6–434), and the median number of teams was 8 (IQR 5–14.5, range 2–40). In total, 30 studies (71%) included participants who were a mixture of health and non-health professionals 7 19–22 24 26 28–42 44 47 50–54 57. In total, 37 studies (88%) reported the duration of the intensive collaboration part, ranging from 3 hours to 7 days (online supplemental table 3).…”

“…In total, 37 studies (88%) reported the duration of the intensive collaboration part, ranging from 3 hours to 7 days (online supplemental table 3). 7 8 18 21–24 26–29 31–53 55–57…”

“…In total, 28 studies (67%) reported the number of final outputs developed during the event 7 8 18–20 22–27 29 30 35 36 38–40 42 44–47 50 52 55 57. The median number of outputs was 8 (IQR 6–13, range 2–40).…”