TELHack kicked off today at IDEA London in Shoreditch with Health Education England working in partnership with Hack Partners to organise and host the event.
Participants started arriving along with those invited to attend the launch. Pretty immediately there was a real buzz in the air and it was great to start meeting many of our clinical mentors for the first time as well as those actually taking part in the hackathon.
After the speakers, all emphasising this event as a real opportunity to create an innovative interface between healthcare education professionals and developers, designers, technologists and entrepreneurs with a view to improving education and training and, ultimately, patient care, it was into a crazy ice-breaker session. Random words shouted out formed the basis for ad hoc teams to pitch wacky, and not so wacky, start up ideas.
Then with an overview of the challenges that HEE and sponsors RCNi had presented, it was down to individuals to pitch their ideas. There were over 25 and these needed to be whittled down which happened through a lively, crowd post-it session. The final 12 or 13 (I’m not actually sure how many we have now!) then re-presented their ideas and what they needed in their team to make it happen. So, here we are at the close of the first afternoon and evening with teams already having got stuck in to their ideas.
As Chris Munsch, one of our clinical mentors, a cardiac surgeon, commented this evening – ‘out of chaos, order’. From frenetic activity throughout the evening, a set of ideas, a number of teams and already a clear determination on the part of participants to see their project to fruition. It’s going to be an exciting weekend.