Health hackathon as a venue for interprofessional education: a qualitative interview study

ABSTRACT

A Health Hackathon provides an opportunity for healthcare professionals to collaborate with IT developers and designers to solve health issues using technology and thus serves as a potential venue for interprofessional education. The present paper reports the views and experiences of participants on how the KKU mHealth Hackathon 2017 served as a venue for interprofessional education. A phenomenological approach was used involving semi-structured in-depth interviews of three faculty members and three students who participated in the hackathon. Participants expressed their learning experiences during the event, as well as factors that promoted or hindered learning. Our findings suggest that a health hackathon can serve as a suitable venue for interprofessional education as interviewees reported how they had learnt to successfully collaborate in interprofessional teams, move beyond their prior views and appreciate complementary work from other professions, focus on solving problems practically, and create a collegial, collaborative atmosphere. There were also some potential downsides of the hackathon that could be solved with an improved design in future occasions. A Health Hackathon can be an important opportunity for interprofessional education. Further studies should focus on methods to reproduce these positive learning experiences, mitigate the negative aspects, and investigate their long-term effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Hackathon
• interprofessional education
• mHealth
• qualitative method

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Atipong Pathanasethpong

Dr. Atipong Pathanasethpong works as an anesthesiologist and medical educator at the Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. He is the director of the Program for Faculty Development in Medical Education.

Rosawan Areemit

Dr. Rosawan Areemit works as an adolescent medicine physician and medical educator at the Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand.She is the lead developer for a mobile application for Thai parents to better track their children’s health.

Daris Teerakulpisut

Dr. Daris Teerakulpisut works as a nuclear medicine physician at the Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand.He is the current chair of the Nuclear Medicine Unit.

Katharine Morley

Katharine Morley works as an internist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She has worked as a volunteer physician in many health projects in various developing countries.

Michael Morley

Michael Morley as an ophthalmologist at the Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston and an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School. He has worked on many ophthalmology projects in various developing countries.