We believe that innovation is magic that happens when people with no blinders on and from different backgrounds meet in a stimulating environment to dedicate time to a specific field of interest. For us, this is healthcare. This is why we are trying to create the perfect ecosystem where we think we will see innovation happen right in front of us. Our goal is to provide you with the best minds and tangible challenges to really make a difference in healthcare and patient care.

We are a small group of dedicated individuals who crave for excellence and innovation in healthcare, life sciences and medicine. We bring a considerable number of years in the industry and in patient care to the table. With this background, we have teamed up with partners from politics and industry to make our vision real: patient empowerment, patient centricity, and healthy longevity through innovation.

innovate.healthcare is a hackathon and a networking venue. Our goal is to bring bright minds and great ideas together in a stimulating environment. We want people to interact and interchange ideas, thoughts, wishes and beliefs, for this is the cradle of new entrepreneurial endeavours. We want you to interact with each other on eye level, and we want the participants to be able to go out after this event and start founding their own company in healthcare.

We think innovation nowadays transcends the borders of countries and languages. This is why we have the idea of innovate.healthcare being a truly international venue. We want to welcome guests from anywhere on this planet, but we are especially thankful for our cooperation with individuals, consortia, and academia from other countries where we hope to see a number of guests coming from. In order to not exclude anyone, we decided to do all the communication in English in the first place.

This might be the case for all plenum discussions, the framework programme, the pitch in part and the jury, but if your team consists of native speakers of one language other than English, you are free to use whatever language you like.

First, you must become interested in the event and purchase a ticket for participation. After a reverse pitch by the challenge owner, you will select your team. The teams will break into their team rooms and work there until Sunday noon. The reverse pitch means the challenge owner must present the challenge and themselves to the audience. This helps spread the content of the individual challenges among the participants and is the first exercise in pitching.

We provide support from our skilled coaches for specific questions a team might have in order to provide proper preparation for our pitching event on Sunday afternoon, where a Jury will decide about the winners.

We take pride in the real-world challenges that come from our sponsors and facilitators. This means we are working on real-world problems with real physicians and real patients. This is also where the challenges come from, which is why everything you do directly matters at the patient level.

Technically, we could install pure industry challenges with complete teams from an industry partner. If this happens, these challenges will be closed to the public due to IP-specific questions. We do not support industry companies turfing their problems into our hackathon and then picking their solutions right from within without giving back. This might be doable, but not without a further contract and clear IP regulations.

Sure you can. Please run it by us and provide your contact details so we can contact you. Make sure you are ready to act as a challenge owner.

Just go to our challenge page and read the abstracts. If a topic catches your eye, you may go deeper and read the entire description.

Participants decide which challenge they want to work on. However, we have mechanisms to ensure that each team has a good mix of different profiles, such as a (bio-)medical, design, developer, or business profile. Diversity is what we believe to be the keystone for successful innovation. Get your blinders off, and go ahead.

Just be yourself. Do not come with predefined solutions. If everyone does, you will spend too much time discussing why the team should go ahead with your idea rather than taking full advantage of the whole potential that sleeps within your team. If you are not a doctor, don’t worry; there will be one to teach you about anything you need to know. If you are not an economist, don’t worry; someone will show you how business planning works.

The Team Captain leads the team during the event.

Just let us know if you fell in love with one challenge and want to go ahead with it to make a difference. We will contact you and discuss the challenge with you to finally decide about your potential role as a team captain.

Most of the time, the Challenge Owner is a healthcare specialist who brings in a problem and looks for a solution. They can work as a mentor to the Team Captain to bring them up to speed ahead of the venue. The Challenge Owner is also supposed to support solutions invented for the idea and can operate as a business angel or door opener at one point in time.

If you have wondered about some effectiveness issues in your everyday life in healthcare, life sciences and medicine and tried to figure out a way of how to describe the challenge to others, then you are more than halfway through on your way of becoming a challenge owner.

Coaches are experts in their field, and their job is to illuminate the specific reality of products or business models. This is why we bring in people from hospitals and practices, but also from industry and politics. They will help you make your solution Q&A-proof in the end, and they will provide a concise reality check on clinical practicability, patient usability, and financial risk assessments.

Coaches can be booked one at a time, once per coach throughout the venue, and for 30 minutes only. The booking has to be done in advance. We will provide a board with coaches, their backgrounds, fields of expertise, and availability. Groups need then to organize themselves, and the coaches will follow up according to the arranged appointments. Please mind the time-keeping: 30 minutes, hard stop.

If you think you can contribute and show us your USPs, we need to talk in person or on the phone about what role would be appropriate for you and whether it is needed at that moment.

Yes, there will be. We will provide enough food throughout the day. There will also be enough beverages for thirsty tinkerer’s throats. Just for the protocol: alcoholic beverages are not available.

Of course not. We will take care of your elementary needs and have a separate menu from the one for the carnivores. If you have a medical condition requiring a special diet, we will most likely not be able to cover that.

You are welcomed to bring your own sleeping bag and crash out at the hacking venue. The venue is available 24/7.

If you decide not to work on your idea continuously and need a place to crash, please prebook a hotel or hostel bed asap. The city offers a lot of diversity apt for any wallet biopsy.

Ideally, bring your laptop and charger. WIFI will be provided for free at the venue. You will also need your printed ticket or an ID card to get in. Other than that, you just need yourself, a fresh mind, and the passion to get involved.

You are going to be a lucky bunch. This means the jury considers your idea as good and full of potential. Then, you can go ahead and kick-start your business.

The pitches take place on Sunday afternoon.

We are interested in following up with the network of participants and in monitoring the winners’ business success to find out about best practices and share those with our friends. For you and your solution, this could be the time when you found your company and hit the road running. Everything is prepared.

We have people from politics, finance, medical practice, industry, and the patient perspective on the jury. We also have well-established accelerators in the audience and the jury. They can be your next handshake for your company and take you on into their incubators. The heterogeneity of the jury makes sure the decisions are being taken with a holistic view in mind.

Do not worry. Many people are in your shoes. We have a skilled pitch doctor in the venue who will help you set up a presentation and a perfect pitch to bring across your idea within 5 minutes.

The solution your team comes up with during the event is owned by the team. HealthCare Futurists reserve the right to a 25% share in everything that develops based on the hackathon event for those challenges provided by HealthCare Futurists. They are ready to join the teams after the event and help with strategy, market access, etc. Terms can be discussed.

Terms concerning sponsor challenges may differ.