More than 100 people in different coloured shirts filled a room at Begbie Hall on the Royal Jubilee Hospital campus in Victoria Saturday. They were all there for a collective goal: to find innovative ways to solve health care challenges faced by Island Health.
For the second year in a row, the health authority hosted Code Hack, a 24-hour hackathon that brings people from different walks of life and with different experiences together to solve regional health care dilemmas.
Each person wore a different coloured t-shirt to symbolize who they were – a patient, builder, nurse, designer, mentor or community member. They heard pitches for prototypes that would solve problems such as improving de-escalation skills, finding a doctor in the community, giving patients better access to their health records or even helping people find their way around a hospital.
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The participants then split into groups of five or six and have 24 hours to tackle the issue at hand and find a solution for it. After the 24 hours, they pitch their ideas to judges – Dragons’ Den-style – and have the chance to win prizes, including entrepreneurial support for six months after the event in Island Health’s Innovation Lab.
“It’s an opportunity for people who don’t do their work in this way to lean on each other in a new way, think about what it means to work with a designer, nurse or a patient and experience Island Health differently,” said Angela Wignall, lead of the Innovation Lab and manager of the Office of the Chief Nursing Officer.
Last year’s winner, Team Stay@HomeClub, created an application to tackle hospital readmission rates. The group went on to win a national competition for more funding and launched a real-world trial of their prototype on Friday.
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Wignall said Island Health is one of the few authorities that provides opportunities like Code Hack. She said part of what Island Health believes is that things need to be done differently today to get to where they want to be tomorrow.
“We know that we have to do things differently and part of that is cultivating space for people to do their work differently and think differently,” Wignall said.
Island Health’s Code Hack 2020 ran from March 7 – 8. Those interested in the event can view updates on Twitter or Instagram at @VanIslandHealth.
–With files from Nina Grossman
