ArticleBMJ innovations2017
Health hackathons: theatre or substance? A survey assessment of outcomes from healthcare-focused hackathons in three countries.
Article in BMJ innovations, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- Need for the Development of a Specific Regulatory Framework for Evaluation of Mobile Health Apps in Peru: Systematic Search on App Stores and Content Analysis.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2020Pooled it
- First Mile program: North-South partnership experience with health system strengthening in Mbarara, Uganda.Global health action · 2026Article
- The Patient Monitoring Roundtable as Catalyst for Health Care Innovation: Case Study.Journal of participatory medicine · 2026Article
- Fostering innovation and building youth capacity in global health: design, implementation, and evaluation of a youth-led digital health hackathon.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Bridging generative AI and healthcare practice: insights from the GenAI Health Hackathon at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona.BMJ health & care informatics · 2025Article
- Design and implementation of a Targeted HealthcaRe InnoVation & Entrepreneurship (THRIVE) fellowship program.PloS one · 2025Article
- Rethinking global digital health and AI-for-health innovation challenges.PLOS global public health · 2023Review
- Article
- Grass-roots entrepreneurship complements traditional top-down innovation in lung and breast cancer.NPJ digital medicine · 2022Article
- TB Hackathon: Development and Comparison of Five Models to Predict Subnational Tuberculosis Prevalence in Pakistan.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2022Article
- The value of hackathons in integrated knowledge translation (iKT) research: Waterlupus.Health research policy and systems · 2021Article
- Rapid crowdsourced innovation for COVID-19 response and economic growth.NPJ digital medicine · 2021Article
- Pre-emptive Innovation Infrastructure for Medical Emergencies: Accelerating Healthcare Innovation in the Wake of a Global Pandemic.Frontiers in digital health · 2021Article
- Hacking systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE): outcomes of the Waterlupus hackathon.Health promotion and chronic disease prevention in Canada : research, policy and practice · 2020Article
- Hackathons as Stepping Stones in Health Care Innovation: Case Study With Systematic Recommendations.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Article
- Surgathon: a new model for creating a surgical innovation ecosystem in low-resource settings.BMJ global health · 2020Review
- Building Capacity and Training for Digital Health: Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Article
- Health diplomacy through health entrepreneurship: using hackathons to address Palestinian-Israeli health concerns.BMJ global health · 2019Review
- Democratizing innovation through grass-roots entrepreneurship: lessons from efforts to address the opioid epidemic in the United States.BMJ global health · 2019Review
- Institutionalizing healthcare hackathons to promote diversity in collaboration in medicine.BMC medical education · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 8 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHealthcare-focused hackathons are 48-hour platforms intended to accelerate novel medical technology. However, debate exists about how much they contribute to medical technology innovation. The Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) has developed a three-pronged model to maximise their effectiveness. To gauge the success of this model, we examined follow-up outcomes.
methodsOutcomes of 12 hackathons from 2012 to 2015 in India, Uganda and the USA were measured using emailed surveys. To minimise response bias, non-responding teams were coded as having made no progress.
results331 individuals provided information on 196 of 356 projects (55.1% response rate), with no difference in responses from teams participating in different countries (Cramer's V=0.09, p=0.17). 30.3% of projects had made progress after a mean of 12.2 months. 88 (24.7%) teams had initiated pilot testing, with 42 (11.8%) piloting with care providers and 24 (6.7%) with patients. Overall, 97 teams (8.1 per hackathon) drafted business plans, 22 (1.8 per hackathon) had filed patents on their innovations and 15 (1.3 per hackathon) had formed new companies. Teams raised US$64.08 million in funding (average US$5.34 million per hackathon; median award size of $1800). In addition, 108 teams (30.3%) reported at least one member working on additional technologies with people they met at a hackathon. Individual confidence to address medical technology challenges was significantly increased after attending (t(1282)=192.77, p 0.001).
conclusionCAMTech healthcare hackathons lead to consistent output with respect to medical technology innovation, including clinical trials, business plan development, securing investment capital/funding and new company formation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.