29 June 2018 - Hacking Health 2018

Explore the TechMed Centre and the health labs

The three challenges for Hacking Health 2018 are: 

Callenge 1 - DIAGNOSTICS OF A HEART INFARCT 

Case owner: Department of Health Technology and Services Research (HTSR) 

Chest pain is a common cause to visit a doctor or hospital. Most of the patients with chest pain go first to a GP. A relatively large proportion of these patients will be referred to the hospital on suspicion of a heart attack. A smaller proportion of patients will directly report to the emergency department. 

In both situations, a large proportion of the patients will eventually not have a heart attack and acute referral or admission was probably not necessary (but intense and costly).  

How can we improve this care-chain? 

Challenge 2 - Evidencio

Case owner: Brightingale 

Evidencio is a platform of prediction models, follow this link to visit the site: https://www.evidencio.com/. This platform was developed to support the implementation of medical scientific research into clinical practice. On the one hand, the platform facilitates researchers to share their models. On the other hand, the platform offers a more user friendly access for clinicians to use the existing models.

Evidencio was originally developed as an answer to a clinicians need. Nevertheless, we challenge you to think ‘technology-driven’: what would be a great application (field) for Evidencio? What would be Evidencio’s deliverables, how should it work and what should the product look like?

After you have completed this case description, think like an investor, developer, customer or purchaser and describe the business case (deliverable 5). In your pitch (deliverable 6), you convince the investor, head of department, company or board of directors of your plan to use Evidencio (and finance your plan)!   

CHAllenge 3 - Cardiac Resynchronization 

Case owner: DEMCON Advanced Mechatronics 

In some cases of heart failure, Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) can help the heart beat more efficient by optimizing (‘synchronizing’) the contraction of the different heart chambers. CRT is often performed during a vascular procedure, in which transvenous leads are placed in the right atrium (RA), right ventricle (RV) and the left ventricle (LV). This is a time-consuming procedure, whereby in ±10% of the cases the LV lead placement fails. In case of failure of the LV lead, this lead will be placed surgically during a second, open procedure. This surgical procedure is costly and requires a long recovery time for the patient. 

The question is: how do we reduce the LV placement failures and second open procedures? When to decide to replace the current way of working? And if so, what hurdles should be taken to implement this new method in the standard of care?