“The Department of Veterans Affairs is using hackathons to better tie technical developments to health care outcomes.”
“Speaking at the COVID-19 Veterans Health Summit, medical informatician at the VA Innovation Center Dr. Jorge Ferrer outlined the agency’s focus on merging the forward-looking work of its respective IT and health research teams. Ferrer noted this has been an organizing principle of the VA’s hackathons that bring together developers with health care experts and practitioners…”
“Developers and physicians are often trained in separate domains of knowledge, with their work oriented toward producing computational efficiency and positive health outcomes respectively. Ensuring there is a consilience of understanding is vital for helping physicians apply the innovative products tested and produced by their technical partners.”
“The VA organized these development sprints around solving particular clinical issues. For instance, in its April ‘Beat the Pandemic’ hackathon event, VA partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other organizations to address the most pressing problems facing vulnerable populations. Some of the solutions that came out of that event include a telehealth platform to monitor COVID-19 patients at home and a way for multiple patients to use one ventilator, among others…” Read the full article here.
Source: How Hackathons are Helping VA Innovate Patient Care – By Adam Patterson, August 27, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
