Can hackathon sprints unlock sustainable healthcare solutions?

In a hackathon organised by SingHealth in 2023, a pharmacy team from Sengkang General Hospital (SKH) wanted to tackle the inordinate use of plastic bags in medication dispensing.

Unable to find a suitable alternative, the team pivoted to changing patient behavior and attitudes.

They created a system where a green LED lights up for 10 seconds when a patient declines a bag, as well as a running tally displayed on the number of bags saved.

The result? In 2024, the implementation of the initiative saved 179,000 plastic bags, which is equivalent to the carbon footprint incurred from 1,437,440 km of car travel), said SingHealth’s Group Director, Innovation & Transformation, Lee Chen Ee.

The initiative has since been expanded to other public hospitals, including Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH), she added.

GovInsider spoke to Lee and Associate Professor Renzo Guinto, Lead, Planetary Health at SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute (SDGHI) - a joint global health institute under SingHealth and Duke-NUS – to find out more about how hackathons can accelerate environmentally sustainable solutions for the healthcare sector.

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Test, fail, redo at speed

“Perhaps to confront the climate crisis effectively, we should be 'hackathon-ing' every day- on a global scale,” said Assoc Prof Guinto.

“The intense, time-bound nature of hackathons forces teams to design, test, fail, and refine their ideas at speed,” he explained, adding that the sense of urgency is much needed in the healthcare sector to quickly translate ideas into practical and scalable solutions.

He observed that outcomes derived from hackathons tend to be unconventional, due to the diversity of talent within teams and the co-creation of innovations.

Lee added that on one hand, hackathons leverage the collective wisdom of diverse teams to gain fresh insights into complex problems that may reach beyond the healthcare space.

On the other hand, public health and academic institutions can provide the resources that enable these teams to test, develop and scale up their initiatives.

Assoc Prof Guinto pointed to the importance of civil society and businesses in executing and scaling solutions, while universities generate emerging, cutting-edge research.

“Closer collaboration between these sectors can help bridge the gap between ideas and impact,” he said.

GovInsider has been noticing a broader trend of government agencies running hackathons to crowdsource solutions for public problems both in Singapore and beyond.

These include Open Government Products’ (OGP) citizen hackathon in Singapore, Taiwan’s annual Presidential Hackathon that taps on government’s open data, as well as Govtech hackathons in Poland and Lithuania.

Inaugural regional hackathon

Recently, SDGHI alongside two other co-organisers hosted its inaugural regional hackathon, Asia-Pacific Global Health Innovation Hackathon, to explore data-driven solutions to address the intersection of health and climate challenges from January 18 to 19.

The two other co-organisers are the International Collaboration Office under the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre, and the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medicine Innovation Institute (AMII).

The hackathon brought together 16 teams from 13 Asia Pacific countries, and public sector partners including OGP, the National Environment Agency (NEA), SingHealth, World Health Organisation (WHO) and more.

The teams were made up of innovators, technical experts, researchers and healthcare professionals from Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam.

The winning solutions ranged from a child-friendly, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered biosensor for respiratory disease monitoring, to an application programming interface (API) providing real-time air quality predictions for cardiovascular disease prevention, and a data platform creating risk maps for rodent infestations and related diseases.

The teams are awarded a six-month incubation programme, each valued at S$25,000, to further develop their proofs-of-concepts (POCs) into fundable solutions. They will be supported by mentors coming from health, sustainability and innovation sectors as well.

What agencies can do

Assoc Prof Guinto recommended for both public and private healthcare agencies to begin “hacking” solutions internally by training their workforce on sustainable healthcare and fostering a culture of incubation, innovation and iteration.

These efforts should be extended to both clinical departments and administrative offices.

Sustainability - alongside more familiar criteria like healthcare quality, cost-effectiveness and patient satisfaction - need to be weaved in across the supply chain, from designing hospitals, powering healthcare services, to procuring medical supplies, he added.

It is also key for higher management to craft sustainability statements and publish annual environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports. These frameworks and measurement criteria will set the positive first steps, alongside concrete policies and programmes to achieve these goals.

GovInsider recently covered the launch of the world’s first advanced degree in sustainable healthcare in Singapore.

Prof Yeoh Khay Guan, CEO of a separate public healthcare cluster, National University Health System (NUHS), pointed to the need for the healthcare sector to “engender a culture of sustainability in the way we care for our patients.”