The health sector in WA presents unique challenges because of the remoteness of facilities, a widely spread population, and increasingly disparate and separate digitised systems intended to enable it all.

The WA Health Hackathon 2024, bought to you by the WA Data Science Innovation Hub and generously supported by HBF Health, The North Metropolitan Health Service, The Child and Adolescent Health Service, The WA Department of Health, the WA Life Sciences Innovation Hub and Arkahna, tapped the potential in today’s programmers and coders to apply to the biggest problems facing the sector.

Teams of student and enthusiast innovators came together with a series of program mentors and judges, selecting from five of the most urgent health sector data problems identified by a panel and using their expertise to build the tools that might solve them.

The challenges:

1. Planning youth mental health interventions.
2. Improving end of life care.
3. Simplifying and enhancing complex health information provided to patients.
4. Reducing emergency department wait times.
5. Optimising treatment plans for kids in rehab.

A host of great ideas

The technical knowledge and passion on show throughout the event wasn’t only evident, it inspired everybody involved, from our panel of mentors to judges and, during our October 24 Finale event, the entire audience who attended.

Congratulations to the winners, runners up and notable mentions:

HBF Health Hackathon Prize:

Waiting Around

Honourable Mention​:

Coder Dojo

Honourable Mention​:

Torab

Technical Achievement Prize​:

The A* Team

Youth Participation Prize​:

Polarstate

What was obvious on the night however was that every team who contributed was a winner. The opportunity to present to and impress decision makers in the health industry and the informal networking that followed proceedings was invaluable, not just for the next generation of data scientists and programmers but the business and services that will be employing them.