Hackathons within medical education: Promoting cutting-edge innovation in surgery

Abstract

Medical students need to begin to learn how to innovate earlier in their training. Hackathons offer opportunities to foster innovation in healthcare. We launched a hackathon for medical students to generate solutions to a real-world surgical problem. We focused on generating solutions to better support more women in surgery, an area of medicine where women remain underrepresented. The goal of our event was to not only generate solutions at a systemic level but within our own medical school, break down barriers for female medical students by allowing them to network with Dalhousie surgeons and better explore potential career goals by attending the event. Attendees reported the event provided an opportunity to build problem solving skills, communication skills and the opportunity to network with like-minded peers. Our hackathon supported idea generation however further emphasis on translation of solutions from idea generation to implementation within our healthcare system is needed.