"Adaptive and resilient healthcare 2030 - utopia or reality?" - was the motto of this year's Health Economics Talks (GÖG), which have reinvented themselves once again in their 17th year of existence - namely as an event by and with young experts. The most visible sign of this was that the health economics event took place completely virtually for the first time this year and in combination with a hackathon. The tried-and-tested specialist presentations and discussion on October 23, 2020 were preceded by a three-day hackathon for students, which started on October 21, 2020 with expert keynote speeches and in which students from the Ludwighafen University of Applied Sciences (HWG LU) developed innovative solutions to problems in healthcare.
For the first time, Josefine Becker, Christoph Hinger and Christine Lohse, graduates of the HWG LU's health economics degree programs, helped to organize the symposium. With their suggestions for the content and format, as well as their connections in the community of young healthcare experts, they helped to make the GÖG 2020 a success. In total, the organizing team led by Prof. Dr. Eveline Häusler and Prof. Dr. Elke Raum was able to register more than 200 participants.
Young expertise in demand and encouraged
As part of a three-day hackathon, HWG LU students were able to try out innovative approaches to solving specific problems in healthcare. The student teams worked on tasks submitted by topic sponsors from all areas of healthcare. In view of the renewed sharp rise in COVID-19 case numbers and the increasing number of serious hospitalizations, the project on "Optimizing visitor management in hospitals" was extremely topical. Walid Sbaih, Operational Director of IT Companies for Innovation and Technology Rhine Neckar LU/MA, who sponsored the task, was delighted with the solution proposed by the students: "I'm really impressed that they were able to assign this [QR] code to the hospital right up to the patient's bedside. Perfect!"
The project "Adaptive and resilient management of drug supply" also dealt with challenges directly related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The question here was how a shortage of medical goods, 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 national borders. Topic sponsor Dr. Jörg Breitenbach, who now 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 securing the supply of important medical goods with their results: "Such a database would be a benefit for Germany and could also take Europe a step further. I was just thinking about whether we shouldn't send this to the Minister of Health so that he can see what proposals can be developed in such a short time with little effort."
The valuable results for practical application show how important it was to involve proven experts on the subject of innovation management and design thinking in 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 specialist presentations with current relevance
Scenarios for the future development of healthcare, national and international experiences and findings from the management of the coronavirus pandemic or the benefits that digital healthcare applications can provide - as in previous years, the established part of the Health Economics Talks on October 23, 2020 offered a variety of presentations 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 delighted that their vision of the Health Economics Talks 2020 as an event by and with young experts was a success and that the combination of tried-and-tested and new ideas was very well received by the participants. Prof. Dr. Elke Raum was particularly impressed by the "interesting and inspiring presentations" and pointed 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 the HWG LU has underlined its claim to be a competence center for questions of care design and innovation in the healthcare sector. This is all the more important as the university wants to position itself even more strongly as an educational institution with a focus on the healthcare sector in the future."
Specialist contact:
Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society
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
