Time for an update on the Smart Health coLAB organised by Padang & Co.
For starters, I think it is important to acknowledge the work put in by the folks at Padang & Co, the event was fantastic in several aspects, be it logistical, operational or even content-wise, it was simply a great event!!!
The event is actually comprised of four ‘sub-events’;
- Smart Health Futures Workshop on Monday (7 to 9 pm), 11 May 2015
- Data and Tech Workshop on Tuesday on Tuesday (7 to 9 pm), 12 May 2015
- Smart Health Services Workshop on Thursday (7 to 9 pm), 14 May 2015
- Networking Night on Friday (7 to 9 pm), 15 May 2015
- Smart Health Hack on Saturday (9 am – 7.30 pm), 16 May 2015
Unfortunately, I did not attend all the sessions above (work caught up), just the workshop on Thursday, where I delivered a topic titled “Health Systems & Apps Design” on Thursday (although the content included the theme for both the Smart Health Futures Workshop as well as Data and Health Workshop) as well as Saturday where I served as a mentor during the Hackaton.
As I understand, the talk was well received, even among attendees who are already holding high level positions in the Health Informatics industry (which is encouraging). Several people working in associated industry (e.g. medical devices, health and healthcare) approached me to find out more about Health Informatics (as well as Digital Health), which I see as an excellent indicator that my advocacy work should continue (o wish me luck).
What was really interesting, was the Hackaton itself on Saturday. I was extremely impressed by the diversity of the participants coming together to solved the Hackaton’s challenges, there were students, people from finance, technical folks, coders, data scientists, PhDs from other industry (some working in adjacent industry, some not), health and healthcare professionals (there was a radiologist) – simply amazing and I felt extremely privileged to be serving as a mentor to them, sharing my experience and expertise (be it Technical, Health, Healthcare, Health Informatics, Technology, Behavior Economics, Strategy or even Marketing).
Due to the diversity of the people involved, the various teams were able to come up with solutions that carries no “industry baggage” with them, this brings new perspectives towards how one might go about solving challenges in Chronic Diseases – which is priceless. More importantly, these people are driven / motivated and this alone is enough to make a difference to any industry.
Of course, the limiting factor was time (there are only so much things one can do in a day) but I feel that such Hackatons should be held more frequently as it is an excellent way to crowdsource innovation.
I look forward to the next health relath Hackaton by Padang & Co.
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 