Hack the Hospital – 5G Transatlantic Lab 2021 is an initiative by Mobile World Capital Barcelona, the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona, the Boston Children’s Hospital and Garage Storie. The goal is to find innovative solutions based on tech such as 5G, augmented reality and extended reality (XR) to improve quality of life for young people between the ages of 12 and 17 who spend long spells in hospital, as well as their families.

International and multi-disciplinary hackathon

The three-day event will see participants organised into five teams of professionals from the spheres of engineering, education, design, psychology and health, along with mentors and international speakers. Each team will discuss and propose solutions focusing on one of the five project challenges: socialisation, mental health, education, entertainment and family experience.

The challenges gave been designed in close collaboration with twenty teenagers from the science boards from the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu de Barcelona, the group Kids Barcelona and the Boston Children’s Hospital. In addition, these youngsters will be joining the five teams at the hackathon and forming part of the evaluation process for the projects presented.

Various online activities with leading tech innovation experts will be organised during the two weeks before the event, with participants to include Google, Walt Disney Studios, MIT Boston, Harvard University and New York University.

Results and project application

Ten finalist projects will be chosen for presentation before an international jury, who will select the best two. The winning projects will be presented to the Mobile World Capital Barcelona and developed in collaboration with innovation teams from Cisco, the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona and the Boston Children’s Hospital, who are committed to trialling and evaluating the projects with real patients.