"Adaptive and resilient healthcare 2030 - utopia or reality?" - was the motto of this year's Health Economics Talks (GÖG), which reinvented themselves once again in the 17th year of their existence - namely as an event by and with young experts. The most visible sign was that this year, for the first time, the health economics event was held completely virtually and in combination with a hackathon. The proven expert presentations with discussion on October 23, 2020, were preceded by a three-day hackathon for students, which started with expert keynote presentations already on October 21, 2020, and in which students of the Ludwighafen University of Applied Sciences (HWG LU) developed innovative approaches to solving problems in health care.
For the first time, with Josefine Becker, Christoph Hinger and Christine Lohse, graduates of the health economics courses at HWG LU have participated in the organization of the symposium. With their suggestions on the content and format, as well as their connections in the community of young health experts, they helped make GÖG 2020 a success. In total, the organizing team around Prof. Dr. Eveline Häusler and Prof. Dr. Elke Raum had more than 200 participants.
Young expertise in demand and promoted
During a three-day hackathon, students from HWG LU were able to test innovative approaches to solving concrete problems in healthcare. The student teams worked on tasks that had been submitted by topic sponsors from all areas of healthcare. In view of the renewed sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and the meanwhile increasing number of serious hospitalizations, the project on "Optimizing visitor management in hospitals" was of outstanding topicality. Walid Sbaih, Operational Manager of IT-Gesellschaften für Innovation und Technologie Rhein Neckar LU/MA, who had brought in the task as a topic sponsor, was enthusiastic about the students' proposed solution: "I am really thrilled that they managed to assign the hospital to the patient's bed with this [QR] code. Perfect!"
The Adaptive and Resilient Medication Supply Management project also addressed challenges directly related to the Covid 19 pandemic. Here, the question was how a shortage of medical supplies, such as medicines or protective clothing for medical and nursing staff, can be identified in good time, and what measures can be taken to counteract this across countries. Topic sponsor Dr. Jörg Breitenbach, who today heads a start-up company in the pharmaceutical sector and previously held various management positions at ABBOTT for many years, was convinced that the students had developed an important building block for ensuring the supply of important medical goods with their results: "Such a database would be a gain for Germany and could also take Europe a step further. I was just thinking about whether we shouldn't send this to the health minister so he can see what proposals can be developed in such a short time with little effort."
The results, which are valuable for practical application, show how important it was to involve proven experts on the subject of innovation management and design thinking at the hackathon with Prof. Dr. Stefan Lacher, Prof. Dr. Regina Raschke and Prof. Dr. Jasmina Stoebel and the team from the Social Innovation Lab at HWG LU.
Broad spectrum of expert presentations with current relevance
Scenarios for the future development of healthcare, national as well as international experiences and insights from the management of the Corona pandemic or the benefits that digital health applications can provide - as in previous years, the established part of the Health Economics Talks on October 23, 2020, offered a variety of lectures by renowned speakers on current topics in addition to the hackathon.
Positioned as a center of excellence
The initiators Prof. Dr. Eveline Häusler and Prof. Dr. Elke Raum are pleased that their vision of the Health Economics Talks 2020 as an event by and with young experts has succeeded and that the linking of the tried and tested with new ideas was very well received by the participants. Prof. Dr. Elke Raum was particularly impressed by the "interesting and inspiring presentations" and points out that these, as well as the student presentations, will be made available to all interested parties via the HWG LU homepage in the coming weeks. Prof. Dr. Eveline Häusler concluded by highlighting the importance of the first digital edition of the Health Economics Talks for the university: "With this event, Health Economics at HWG LU has underscored its claim to be a center of excellence for issues of care design and innovation in the health sector. This is even more important as the university aims to position itself even more strongly as an educational institution with a focus on the health sector in the future."
Technical contact:
Ludwigshafen University of Applied Sciences
Department of Management, Controlling, HealthCare
Prof. Dr. Eveline Häusler
Prof. Dr. Elke Raum
Scientific conference management
E-mail: eveline.haeusler@ 8< SPAM protection, please remove >8 hwg-lu.de;elke.raum@ 8< SPAM protection, please remove >8 hwg-lu.de
