NHS Hack Day 9 - Cardiff
Last weekend saw us return to Cardiff for the 9th NHS Hack Day - once again, with organisation headed up by the life affirming Anne Marie Cunningham.
NHS Hack Days are weekend events that bring together patients, healthcare and technology professionals and other “geeks who love the NHS” under the banner of making NHS IT less bad. It’s always exciting to see people discover how digital products are made by “Not Magic”, not to mention the jaw-dropping that goes on when it gets explained just how bad much of the status quo really is.
Many of the pitches highlighted the need for quickly and easily customisable hospital systems, that allow people to collaborate more easily, and also to generate alerts and notifications, routing information that exists within our institutions to the people who can actually make a difference with it, in time.
As the second day drew to a close, we all gathered together to share what we’d made, and what we’d learnt over the weekend.
We thought that the team who rescued Virtual Microscope - a previously abandonned open source project for viewing, navigating & annotate very high-resolution images deserved huge credit.
Meanwhile the group that took the Oculus Rift and turned it into an eye-test scenario complete with zombies seemed like they had a whole world of fun !
In the end the grand prize went to Medboard - a system for connecting medical students to the classes & opportunities available to them at their respective institutions.
In addition, we were delighted to see our youngest ever attendee to an NHS Hack Day, with Ada Reynolds stealing the record at just 5 weeks old! Although she may have slept through much of this one, we’re all looking forward to her contributions next time !
Next time looks like being London in May 2015 - although the venue & exact date are yet to be confirmed. We’d love it if you joined us though - so do sign up to the mailing list to be kept in the loop !
Photo credits: Paul Clarke