WA Health Hackathon sparks innovation for better patient care

Congratulations to all participants at 2024 WA Health Hackathon.

Proudly sponsored by the Department of Health for the second consecutive year, the event brought together over 100 problem solvers who pitched ideas aimed at revolutionising health service systems in Western Australia.

This year’s main winner, ‘Waiting Around’, leveraged technology to improve the quality, efficiency and accessibility of healthcare services, by devising a simulation tool to predict emergency department waiting times and communicate this information to patients via a mobile phone app.

Partnering with the WA Data Science Innovation Hub, the Department released ‘synthetic’ data to challenge participants with real-world health issues.

Teams tackled five key questions designed to improve some of the challenges facing the state’s healthcare system, reducing emergency department wait times and improving patient experience.

The hackathon aims to keep WA at the forefront of the digital revolution by promoting the education, training and application of data science throughout WA.

A huge thank you to our diverse range of sponsors across health agencies, the private sector and data platform providers, showing the power of cross-sector collaboration in tackling healthcare’s toughest challenges.

Congratulations to all the winning teams:

  • HBF Winning Team Prize $3000: Waiting around (Challenge Owner: Department of Health)
  • Technical Achievement Prize $1000: The A* Team (Challenge Owner: Children and Adolescent Health Service)
  • Youth Achievement Prize $1000: PolarState (Challenge Owner: HBF Health)
  • Honourable Mention 2x$1000 per each:
  • CoderDojo (Challenge Owner: HBF Health)
  • ToRab (Challenge Owner: North Metropolitan Health Service)

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