SDSU Hosts Fifth Big Data Hackathon, Offering $13K in Prizes for Innovative Health Care Solutions

Open to all students from SDSU and other San Diego colleges and high schools, the Hackathon is an invitation to develop solutions for some of San Diego’s most pressing issues by using skills in journalism, business, marketing, graphic design, data, public health, urban planning, programming, mapping or GIS.

Participants will work to improve access to care, patient satisfaction, new patient experience, health management, and mental health challenges.

Teams can be formed by student groups or assigned by Hackathon organizers for students who join individually.

Teams vie for a total of $13,000 in prizes. In addition to the top four awards, prize money will be given to teams in categories such as Women in STEM, Most Innovative Proposal Idea, Geocomputational Thinker (College and High School categories), and Strongest Teamwork.

Judges from SDSU, Sharp HealthCare and San Diego Mesa College will evaluate teams based on idea quality (innovation and creativity), market readiness, health care impact, teamwork and collaboration, and overall development and design.

This year, the goal is to find digital solutions to help increase access, manage health, and improve patient satisfaction along the health care journey, according to Ming-Hsiang Tsou, Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age director.

“During the COVID-19 Pandemic, our health care system faced many challenges and obstacles,” Tsou said. “I hope our participants can help our San Diego health communities to provide innovative and sustainable ideas or solutions for improving the quality of our health care and reducing health disparity in San Diego.”

The emphasis on design and creativity means that all skills will be critical to a team’s work.

Participants will get a “chance to see how they can solve a problem that impacts the wider San Diego community, learn and gain knowledge about big data and its impacts in the field of health care, they get to ideate and create an innovative project, the opportunity to connect and network with others as well as collaborate with teams on a unified goal, and learn a variety of skills in the process (from big data analytic skills to entrepreneurial skills),” said Amy Schmitz Weiss, professor of journalism, and part of the Hackathon planning team since its inception nearly 10 years ago.

Created by the HDMA in collaboration with SDSU’s ZIP Launchpad, the Hackathon has previously addressed issues such as water conservation, crime, disaster response, public health and smart living. In 2022, the first place team won $3,000 by creating “cenos.ai,” an automated healthcare dashboard that simplifies patient appointment scheduling.

“I’m not very tech-savvy, so I was hesitant to attend,” said Anna Skultéti, SDSU Fowler College of Business management alumna (‘23). Her team, the HeartHackers, won first prize and $1,000 in  ZIP Launchpad’s Most Innovative Solution Team Aging Independently category in 2022. Skulteti said that competitors shouldn’t assume coding skills are critical to win.

“It was more about being creative, confident, analytical and a team player,” she said. “Regardless of the outcome or the monetary prize, the time spent with my spontaneously assembled team was the most valuable part of the experience.”

Students will be paired with mentors from the San Diego workforce and academia, which gives them an opportunity to hone their proposal idea pitches in a real-world setting with support from an engaged group of leaders. Mentors include Benjamin Shapiro, CEO and co-founder of Endera Motors/TekMate; Santosh J. Vetticaden, board member of NuFund Venture Group; and Jill Castellano, investigative data coordinator at inewsource.

During the two-day event, keynote speakers include Jon McManus, chief data, AI and development officer, Sharp HealthCare; Laura Buffard, associate vice president innovation, SDSU Division of Research and Innovation; and Todd Butler, dean, College of Arts and Letters.