Hack4Health Hackathon challenges students to design solutions for health systems

On a Saturday afternoon at the tail end of the fall term break, a group of medical, computer science and engineering students from across the universities of Calgary and Alberta were hard at work addressing pain points in the health-care system.

Students gathered to present digital health solutions supported by artificial intelligence (AI) — the culmination of a three-week exercise known as the Hack4Health Hackathon, hosted by the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Society (AIMS) and supported by the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Literacy and Integrity (CAIELI).

“The most transformative advancements in health care will come from interdisciplinary collaboration,” says Austin Barr, AIMS co-president and Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) medical student. “With Hack4Health, we wanted to give medical, computer science and engineering students a space to connect, learn each other’s language, and see what interdisciplinary collaboration can look like.”

More than 100 students were placed in cross-faculty teams and worked together over several weeks, developing digital health tools that address challenges such as surgery wait times, staff burnout, patient screening and charting. Teams met with mentors, iterated on prototypes and, finally, pitched to a panel of health and business experts:

• Dr. Jehangir Appoo, MDCM, cardiovascular surgeon and health care venture capital investor
• Dr. Gesche Riabowol née Tallen, MD, PhD, pediatric oncologist and associate professor, CSM; Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute member
• Dr. Matt Rahimi, MBA’04, PhD’13, adjunct assistant professor, Haskayne School of Business; and instructor and director, Business Development and Experiential Learning Initiative, University of Lethbridge, Dhillon School of Business 

Meet the winning team 

The competition’s culmination saw more than 18 interdisciplinary teams present their prototypes, with judges selecting one winning team to receive a grant to support further product development:

• Surgery Video Summarizer: a tool that automatically tags and splits surgery videos into sections based on the steps of the operation. The winning team consisted of:
  • Ali Al-Khaz'Aly, BSc'20, CSM
  • Sofia Hospedales Parjan, CSM
  • David Onofeghara, Schulich School of Engineering
  • Rikthi Pranadhik Mondal, Faculty of Science

“Hack4Health gave us an opportunity to combine our diverse skill sets to build a complete end-to-end solution within a short timeline,” notes the winning team. “This grant will help train more powerful video interpretation models that are smarter and more effective at predicting different stages of surgery.”

Other honourable mentions

• SmartPeer: a virtual reality tool that helps neurodivergent children practice real-life situations in a safe, controlled space.
• RespiraTrack: an app that uses AI to detect unusual breathing patterns.
• DocBox: a tool that works with health records to automatically sort and manage clinicians’ inboxes.
• MomSafe: a smart prenatal tool that helps first-time parents monitor their pregnancy.

Hack4Health encourages students to think creatively about how technology can improve health-care delivery. 

“We’re constantly hearing about digital health and AI in health care, but it’s hard for medical students to meaningfully engage in those conversations with limited technical backgrounds,” says Michelle Pham, AIMS co-president and CSM medical student. “This initiative gives students the opportunity to engage early, giving them a window into what building these tools actually looks like.”

Laying the groundwork for future innovation

With the inaugural Hack4Health wrapped up, AIMS and its partners are already thinking about what comes next. 

“Our hope is that students came out of Hack4Health not just with a prototype, but with new collaborators and the momentum to keep pursuing interdisciplinary projects,” says Barr. “If we can spark even a few long-term partnerships between medicine, engineering, and computer science, that’s how we’ll see real change in our health system.”

Leeanne Morrow, BA'01, director of CAIELI, agrees. “It is the entire purpose of CAIELI to help students work in a transdisciplinary manner to have a big impact and learn from each other to help solve problems. We look forward to working alongside students and supporting more of these events in the future.”