First NHS Hack Day in London

The first NHS Hack Day will be held in London at the end of next week, to bring together doctors, developers and designers.

Junior doctor, NHS Hack Day organiser, and EHI columnist Dr Carl Reynolds, said the event is for "geeks who love the NHS" and want to spend the weekend working together on “software that promotes health.”

Dr Reynolds said he was inspired by the Cabinet Office's recent, successful hack days, and frustrated by the slow pace of improvement in NHS digital health services. As a result he decided to team up with the technology start-up community to make it happen.

Dr Reynolds, who is a national clinical fellow, and co-founder of the software company Open Health Care UK, which promotes open source in healthcare, said: "There's so much to be done in digital health.

“No employer can own all of the talent. I hope the NHS Hack Day will show the NHS what can be done with a different business model.”

Hackdays, which began in the US technology start-up community, are typically intense weekend events that bring together a group of developers to rapidly build and prototype software prototypes.

They often make heavy use of open source software, open data and web services, and employ rapid app style development.

At their best they can show how short development sprints from passionate coders can make a difference. The two day NHS event will run 26-27 May at the University of London Union in Male Street, London.

Its aims will be to encourage participants to have fun and to provide an opportunity for “bright doctors, developers and designers to meet and learn from people in other disciplines they wouldn't normally meet.”

It will also aim to create some useful software and showcase the benefits of open source software, open governance, open data, challenges, and the talent in the small, medium enterprise software development community

The event has already picked up high profile support from Professor Sir Muir Gray, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, Sir Bruce Keogh, Peter Lees, Ben Goldacre, Claire Gerada, NHS Right Care, the NHS Information Centre, NICE, and the Cabinet Office's Government Digital Service.

More information is on the NHS Hack Day website. If you would like a ticket or make an enquiry, please email Carl Reynolds.