With our interview series “Behind the scenes”, we’ll introduce you to the challenge owners and their challenges of the Healthcare Hackathon Bayern – Erlangen 2025. Each interview offers exclusive insights into the ideas, goals, and relevance of the challenges that participants will tackle during the event.
We’re starting the series with AWS – Amazon Web Services.
In the interview, Dr. Christoph Russ, Tech Business Development Manager – Healthcare | AI | EMEA at AWS, will give us insights into their challenge “Health Chat: Make Data Exploration Fun & Useful for Anyone!”.
How was this challenge inspired?
In collaboration with Medical Valley, we recognize the transformative potential of AI in healthcare and are committed to democratizing access to these technologies. Our mission is to make AI capabilities accessible to everyone, from healthcare professionals to researchers and developers, regardless of their technical expertise. While healthcare organizations are making tremendous progress with machine learning, there is an opportunity to learn how to make innovation more accessible.
As part of the Health AI Hub initiative, leading organizations, such as the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (IKIM) at University Medicine Essen and I-NEXT Data at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center have shown that AI solutions can be deployed in less than 72 hours, bear the potential to reduce documentation time by 50% and improve treatment plan optimization by 30%. This challenge was inspired by the need to bridge the gap between complex healthcare data and its practical application.
We want to empower participants to learn how they can quickly create innovative solutions that make healthcare data exploration as natural as having a conversation, using tools like Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Q. Here we will put these tools into the hands of builders, allowing them to explore how to combine traditional ML approaches with a broad choice of latest generative AI technology. Our goal is to help healthcare professionals and researchers unlock new insights and improve patient outcomes.
Why is this topic so important?
Healthcare is experiencing a digital transformation, where AI can significantly impact patient care and operational efficiency. Leading institutions across Europe are using AI solutions to reduce administrative burden and improve their operation efficiency.
However, the challenge lies in making these technologies accessible and building them sustainably. The healthcare industry generates large amounts of data, from medical images to patient records, many of which hold insights in unstructured formats, which make them difficult to process. By leveraging AWS services for healthcare (e.g. AWS HealthLake, AWS HealthImaging, and AWS HealthOmics) in combination with generative AI tools, participants can learn to quickly develop solutions that transform complex data into actionable insights. This challenge represents an opportunity to contribute to healthcare innovation while learning to apply AI responsibly.
Why should one definitely take part in the Healthcare Hackathon Bayern – Erlangen 2025?
This hackathon offers a unique opportunity to work with cutting-edge AI technologies to make a real difference for healthcare. Participants will gain hands-on experience with AWS services and learn how to build AI solutions for real-world healthcare challenges with speed. You’ll join a community of innovators and technology enthusiasts, working to transform healthcare delivery, and gain insights into how others have reduced the time from idea to solution. This event provides an excellent platform for learning, networking, and developing skills that are increasingly valuable in the healthcare technology sector. Whether you’re interested in clinical decision support, medical imaging, or patient care optimization, this hackathon offers the tools and guidance to bring your ideas to life.
Join us to build innovative healthcare solutions, access cutting-edge AWS AI services, network with industry experts, and accelerate your research or startup journey.
What’s the ideal scenario for what happens with your challenge after the hackathon?
We envision participants continuing their innovation journey beyond the hackathon, contributing to the broader healthcare AI community. Successful projects could potentially join the ecosystem of solutions making healthcare more accessible and efficient. To support this journey, AWS provides various resources through programs like AWS Activate Credits for startups and AWS Cloud Credit for Research for academic initiatives. We encourage participants to open-source their solutions, enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing within the healthcare community.
Your innovations could join successful examples like IKIM’s CellOnCloud flagship project, which translates research into practical applications. The skills and experiences gained during the hackathon will be valuable as healthcare continues to embrace AI-driven transformation.