HealthTech Hackathon

It is an intensive hackathon where people pitch ideas, form teams and build prototypes or sometimes full service over the 48 hours. The BDL Accelerate HealthTech Hackathon is focused on disrupting the healthcare industry with technology.

Registration is open to anyone. We are looking for people with different roles – front-end developers, back-end developers, mobile developers, designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, project managers and health sector specialists, but also other people interested in building a cool project within 48 hours.

Sure, BDL Accelerate HealthTech Hackathon 2016 is about networking, meeting new people, hacking, building new services and finding new friends. After pitching ideas on Wednesday evening, all participants will choose their favourite idea and form a team on-site. You should carefully review all pitched ideas, talk to the team members, negotiate, brainstorm and finally find a best matching project for yourself. Then join this team and start working on the project.

We ask all participants to submit their ideas already when registering but also share your idea to our Facebook group before the event. This allows other participants to review their idea, ask questions and possibly to develop the idea further. On the hackathon event, there will be about 30-35 slots for ideas.

On Wednesday night there are 90 second pitches for each idea, followed by 2-3 questions from audience/mentors. You can have one slide (PDF) to support your pitch.

Afterwards when ideas are pitched, each participant will choose the idea that s/he wants to work on. Ideas that are able to gather a sufficient team around them will prevail. People who have chosen the ideas that are not able to gather proper team will have join other teams.

Yes and no. 48 hours is more than enough time to take an idea, build a working prototype, alpha or beta service and make it publicly available for users, potential customers. However, to make your prototype, alpha or beta into a viable business, much more work after the event is needed. We encourage (and give preference in selection) to those participants, who show an interest and willingness to continue working on (successful and promising) ideas after the event!

Not really. The main idea of the event is to build startup community, find new friends and meet people, build something cool in 48 hours. But it’s not so much about winning the prize or getting financing. You might get financing as well, and as a matter of fact our Main Prize is 10,000$ in cash, but that’s not the main goal. This hackathon is mostly an experience of building a new (working) project in 48 hours, meet and work with new people whom you probably would not meet otherwise.
If you’re interested in participating in a Startup Competition at BDL Accelerate 2016, you can find more information here.

In our experience, best teams have between 4 and 7 members. Each team should be self-sufficient by having all the main roles (business and product vision, design, programming, marketing, business development, health sector specialist) covered.

Yes, you can do various preparations for your project unless you start designing or coding. We encourage you to think of the project name, business model, short term and long-term plan etc. But it’s not allowed to do any coding work on the project before the BDL Accelerate HealthTech Hackathon event.

The project built during the Hackathon event is owned by the team who built it. So it’s up to the teams to decide how do they take it forward. Some ideas are very likely to be developed into successful businesses, others struggle to find a feasible business model and fade away. Organizers are encouraging teams to continue developing the ideas and provide mentorship, but ultimately, the success or failure rests solely with the members of the team.

Sleep is for the weak. (Just kidding). While some teams pulled all-nighters at the last events, most successful teams did take time to get a full 7-8 hour sleep, come back in the morning refreshed and were fully productive during the day. We provide floor space for foreigners in the venue in case you want to save on hotel costs. Also, we will provide selected applicants flying in for the Hackathon with accommodation.

The BDL Accelerate HealthTech Hackathon is a 48 hour event, with 24 hour security on site. You can come and go as you please but you will need to keep your name tags and armbands on at all times.

Please notify us by e-mail as soon as possible about such changes so that we can give your spot to someone else in the waiting list.