The winning team, Hello World, at the MPID Health Hackathon in February.

---

Teams of budding entrepreneurs and strategists converged on Macquarie for the first Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID) Hackathon on 25 – 26 February, with the task of designing digital services that could help people better access healthcare information.

A Hackathon is an intensive program in which teams develop exciting new ideas within a particular problem space. A judging panel consisting of representatives from NAB, Macquarie University and the Australian Institute of Health Innovation evaluated the outcome of digital based ideas and solutions.

John Shi-Nash, Director of Incubation and Entrepreneurship, says the event showcased some of the brightest minds, where thinking differently and collaborating to create innovative solutions were at the forefront of everyone’s work.

“Events like these really help the next generation of people looking to use technology to make our lives simpler and better,” he says.

The winning teams developed an integrated medical billing and payment service, a chat bot to track and manage healthcare needs, and a data visualisation service for healthcare companies and practitioners using virtual reality.

Those teams will now work with the MPID to commercialise their ideas.

“The MPID and NAB Hackathon gave me the opportunity to gain real insights into the healthcare industry and enabled us to develop a solution to create efficiency and solve some challenging problems through the use of technology and unique access to NAB’s API technology,” says Neil Anderson, from winning team Hello World.

“My plans for the future would be to co-found a start-up and continue with this full-time!”

To find out more information about the work MPID is doing, visit the website.