What we learned running our hospital’s first hackathon

By Lesley Solomon, Strategy & Innovation Director, Biomedical Research Institute at Brigham & Women’s Hospital

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, based in Boston, has always been a leader in healthcare innovation. But there has never been a focused center to support innovation efforts through resources, connections and advisory services. The Innovation Hub (iHub) was launched out of strategic planning work in which the hospital identified “innovation and discovery” as a key strategic initiative. After more than a year of planning, the iHub was officially launched at our first hackathon, over a weekend in September 2013. You can see the event agenda here.

We had no expectations, but we did have hopes of what might come out of it. We hoped that we might get a couple of good ideas, and start to create a more vibrant community among our clinicians and researchers, and entrepreneurs and scientists outside the hospital.