FutureMed Festival [Design & Innovation Challenge]

FutureMed Festival

The FutureMed Festival is a multi-day event aiming to promote engagement among clinicians in areas of digital technology likely to be essential to the development of healthcare in the future, as identified in the recent Topol review in the NHS. We aim to encourage the development of cross-disciplinary collaboration, and to raise awareness of the possibilities of digital technologies and how they can be used to solve real clinical problems. In practice, this will take the form of a number of evening “workshops” over the course of a week of May 6th, on topics including robotics, informatics and artificial intelligence, offering an introduction to the key principles of these areas of emerging importance, an overview of the promise they offer to the development of medical practice, and guidance on how to get involved for those interested in furthering an interest in these areas.

The week will culminate in an all-day “hackathon”-style event on Satuday May 11th. During this final event, problems identified by clinicians will be put forward, and solutions will be rapidly developed and prototyped over the course of an intensive day by collaborative teams of clinicians, designers and engineers under guidance from a team of senior mentors. These solutions will then be pitched to our team of judges, with prizes for winners & the possibility of further development towards clinical application. Throughout the week, networking events will encourage discussion between clinical staff, designers and those with a technical background on ideas for collaboration, with guidance from our senior clinicians, entrepreneurs and industry partners on how to develop these ideas. These events have the backing of the UL Hospitals Group, with funding from the HSE Spark Initiative, and sponsorship from a number of industry partners for the “hackathon” event.