pitches, pitches, pitches!

Was at the Health Hackathon and our exuberant MC of the event excitedly exclaimed, "Pitches! Pitches! Pitches! Are we reaaaady for Pitches!!" to start off the night. (And it sounded like otherwise)

Hacking Health Toronto

Just this past weekend I attended a Health Hackathon at MarS Discovery District. It was a three day hackathon that began with 35 pitches delivered by individuals in Toronto's healthcare community. We then formed teams by choosing projects we were interested in and then worked on solving the issue throughout the weekend. On the final day we were to submit a working demo and deliver a 2 minute pitch about our solution.

I joined a team working on creating an integrated care pathway (ICP) model for a concurrent disorder, Major Depression and Alcohol Dependence. An ICP has clear guidelines, protocols and algorithms of what standard care should look like for a patient with this diagnosis. It is also a vehicle to bridge evidence based research with evidence based practice. The pathways incorporate process maps, checklists, medication algorithms etc.

Our group decided on creating a digital tool that aimed to help the clinical team keep track of client outcomes, assess trends in clinical outcome and provide a pathway dashboard to illustrate 'where is the patient in their care?' And 'how they are doing'