Cincinnati Children's x Cintrifuse: Digital Health Hackathon
Are you a university student with a passion for healthcare and technology? Love to vibe code, design products, and build new things? Join us for a one-day digital health hackathon with Cincinnati Children's and Cintrifuse at Union Hall in Over-the-Rhine!
Teams of up to four students are invited to spend the day working on one of five real technologies built at Cincinnati Children's, with the clinicians and researchers behind each one on hand for questions. Demos run in the afternoon, and you’ll have the opportunity to pitch to a judging panel from Cincinnati Children's, Cintrifuse, CincyTech, the Veterans Health Administration, Medality, and Disruption Now.
Prizes: $2,500 for first place, $1,000 for second, $500 for third.
The technologies
FlightPlan: Bedside Rounds Design Challenge. FlightPlan organizes a long, complex inpatient hospitalization into a single trajectory view, the way a flight plan organizes a route. It works today for review conversations away from the bedside. Your challenge: design the simplified bedside version that care teams can use during rounds, in the room, with patients and families. Great fit for UX and product design, mobile and tablet interfaces, and front-end skills.
SMART@Home: Clinician Data-View Design Challenge. SMART@Home (Self-Management Assistance for Recommended Treatment at Home) helps patients manage chronic and complex conditions from home, with condition-specific trackers that clinicians configure without writing code and data that flows into the EHR. Right now, the clinician side arrives as raw rows in a table. Your challenge: design the at-a-glance view that turns home monitoring data into faster, better treatment decisions. Great fit for UX, data visualization, and clinical informatics.
DISCOVER: VR Simulation Analytics. DISCOVER is a working digital-twin VR platform where clinicians rehearse rare, high-stakes pediatric scenarios before they ever face them with a real child. It already captures rich performance data, including eye tracking. Your challenge: build the outcomes dashboards and learner report cards that make its impact visible to educators and industry partners. No VR development required.
Parent Resource Hub (PRH). PRH is a live platform of clinically validated online programs that help families navigate child development, behavior, and recovery from pediatric brain injury. The content is proven; the experience around it is the opportunity. Your challenge: design onboarding, personalization, an AI-assisted guide, and engagement features so the right program reaches the right family.
DEAP: Digitally-Enabled Adherence Platform. DEAP builds on a clinic-proven program that reduced kidney transplant rejection episodes by helping young patients take medication as prescribed. Your challenge: create the patient- and family-facing experience layer, from barrier assessment and personalized reminders to progress dashboards and a clinician view showing which patients need attention.
How the day works
8:00 – 8:30 a.m. – Check-in at Union Hall Front Lobby
8:30 – 8:45 a.m. – Event Kickoff, Welcome Remarks and Rules Overview
9:00 – 11:00 a.m. – Hacking Begins, Clinicians Available for Questions
11:00 – 3:00 p.m. – Hacking + Pitch Preparation (Grab-and-go lunch provided at noon)
3:00 – 4:00 p.m. – Project Demonstrations
4:00 – 4:45 p.m. – Judges Confer
5:00 pm. – Award ceremony + Closing Remarks
Snacks and beverages will be available throughout the day. Grab and go lunch will be set up by noon.
Registration note: Register individually and list your team name (teams of up to four; solo participants welcome). You will pick a technology when you register, receive the full technology briefs about two weeks before the event, and can switch tracks then if you want.
Who can participate: current university students (undergraduate or graduate), 18 and older. Register with your school (.edu) email and bring a fully charged laptop and charger. This is a fully in-person event.
Participation requires agreeing to the Hackathon Participation Agreement, which covers intellectual property, confidentiality, and contest rules. Registration closes Thursday, October 15 at 10:00 AM ET, and all registrations are reviewed for approval. Space is limited.