Last month, CSDS in collaboration with the Helix Hub hosted the CSDSx20 Hackathon, an event that showcased the power of collaboration and creativity in healthcare. This event brought together participants from 11 health services and the Department of Health. Over four weeks, teams tackled pressing challenges to improve clinical skills development across Queensland.
What made this Hackathon unique?
Unlike traditional hackathons, CSDSx20 began with practical challenges submitted by problem owners, ensuring a focus on impactful and practical solutions. Spanning four days across four weeks, the hybrid event was thoughtfully structured to prevent fatigue and integrate seamlessly into participants’ schedules. This design allowed teams ample time for ideation, development, and refinement.
Teams addressed diverse problems
Remote Clubfoot Care Accessibility
NWHHS has raised concerns about low attendance for talipes/club foot appointments at Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH), where children need weekly static casting by Advanced Physiotherapists for six weeks. Families often travel over 4000 km round trip from Mount Isa and nearby remote areas, which is costly and challenging, leading to poor attendance and non-compliance. The NWHHS Physio team lacks specialist casting skills, and their transient, rotational workforce limits long-term skill retention. While patient numbers are low, the impact of untreated conditions is significant for families, NWHHS, and children’s future health.
Realistic FONA Training Enhancements
The current emergency FONA training model falls short in preparing healthcare professionals for real-life scenarios. Lacking realism and key sensory cues, the current task trainers fail to replicate the true complexity of airway interventions. This gap hinders skill acquisition and transfer, leaving clinicians underprepared for high-pressure situations where expertise and quick action are critical. Without more realistic training, the risk of poor outcomes in emergency airway management remains high.
Ventilation Device Competency
ED and acute inpatient staff often lack familiarity with home ventilation devices, circuits, and procedures, leading to errors and an inability to troubleshoot alarms on complex ventilators. Changes to primary device settings are not consistently transferred to backup devices, worsening the issue. This problem is prevalent in both tertiary facilities and regional centers, affecting Emergency Departments, acute wards, ICUs, and Community Health respiratory teams. A RiskMan audit revealed underreporting of ventilation-related issues, with known incidents often missing from the data.
Comprehensive Antenatal Education for Midwives
Queensland Health’s antenatal midwives face significant challenges in accessing clinically relevant, up-to-date, and evidence-based information when it is most needed at the point of care. This lack of easily accessible resources creates barriers to providing consistent, informed care and staying aligned with evolving clinical guidelines, policies, and procedures. Without streamlined access to location-specific and current recommendations, midwives may struggle to bridge knowledge gaps effectively, impacting their clinical decision-making and professional development in real-time scenarios.
The winning pitch, AirwayX eFONA Education, tackled a crucial gap in emergency airway management. Emergency front-of-neck access (eFONA) is a rare yet life-saving procedure, performed in approximately 1 in 5000 cases. Despite its importance, many clinicians lack up-to-date formal training.
The CSDS Hackathon was a really great forum for exploring how we might be able to improve how we train emergency airway management (eFONA). It was fantastic to work with Dr Roberta Edmeades and the broader team to put forward our proposed solution, AirwayX, that comprises accessible education (online learning), evidence-based training (part-task trainer enhancement), and to ensure continued capability (creation of the AirwayX network for regular and inter-disciplinary collaboration). With this holistic, all-encompassing, and wrap-around approach, we are very excited as to the potential for AirwayX to revolutionize eFONA training, and look forward to piloting AirwayX soon!
Dr Jeffrey Kim – CSDSx20 Hackathon winning team
This event’s success is a testament to the dedication and talent within our healthcare community. By creating spaces like this hackathon, CSDS continues to empower healthcare professionals to develop solutions that transform clinical practice and improve patient outcomes across Queensland.
Looking for a venue that inspires innovation? The CSDS state-of-the-art facilities are perfect for meetings, workshops, and events - email csds-room-bookings@health.qld.gov.au today to book your next event at CSDS!
