Nine teams from across the region brought expertise and collaborative spirit to the inaugural Arkansas Children’s Innovation Center Digital Health Challenge, and a team from Tulsa won the $10,000 prize for creating an app that would seamlessly connect healthcare workers to emotional support resources.
Arkansas Children’s Innovation Center, in collaboration with Cartwheel Startup Studio, Conductor, Startup Junkie Consulting, HealthTech Arkansas, and the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Arkansas, offered the teams a list of curated and vetted problems that could be solved with digital solutions. Contestants problem-solved and created for 48 hours in an event known as a hackathon, alongside mentors from the partnering organizations before presenting their solutions to a panel of experts including clinicians, administrators, and investors.
The winning team, “Tulsa’s OK”, included participants Hailey Mortimore, Elena Haskins, Nate Fisher, and Cole Anderson, all of Tulsa. The team collaborated to develop an app with a complex decision tree and a closed-loop reporting system that automates steps of Arkansas Children’s WeCARE program.
To ensure each team member is equipped to bring their best to Arkansas Children’s every day, the health system developed WeCARE to provide a dedicated core of trained support staff who provide comfort, care, and compassion to teammates experiencing a difficulty related to work or home. One of the challenges presented to the hackthon teams was to improve the process of connecting team members to assistance through WeCARE. Tulsa’s OK app would allow clinicians who have experienced a traumatic event to receive help more promptly, with better defined outcomes and quicker referrals to additional levels of support and care when needed.
Many of the solutions the hackathon teams presented will continue to inspire further innovation throughout the health system.
“The rapid-fire exchange of ideas among all the participating teams highlighted the importance of working together across industries and skillsets to find concepts that help us provide the best care possible to both our patients and our team members,” said Rick Barr, MD, MBA, chief clinical officer of Arkansas Children’s. “Every team brought innovative thinking to the challenges and pushed us to reimagine how collaboration and partnership can elevate healthcare.”
All teams participating in the hackathon retained the rights to the intellectual property incorporated in their solutions, and Arkansas Children’s will continue working with a number of the teams to support product development with the aim of piloting solutions in their hospitals and clinics.