Industry Leaders Join UCL GBSH for Real‑World Healthcare Hackathon

UCL Global Business School for Health were delighted to recently welcome healthcare and life science industry experts onto campus to lead our GBSH Industry-Led Hackathon event!

Estia Ryan (Investment Principal at Eka Ventures), Dr Avi Mehra (Associate Partner & Clinical Safety Officer at IBM), Dr Shahid Bobat (Director, Global Digital Health at Merck) and Jake Meadows (Head of Product at TORTUS) set real-world healthcare challenges for our students to work on and solve over the course of the day. 

Undergraduate and postgraduate students from across our GBSH programmes worked collaboratively in teams on the challenges, with an opportunity to receive feedback and guidance from the industry experts. The event culminated in a pitching session, where each team of students showcased their ideas to the industry leaders and others in the room, in a bid to win the audience vote! 

Dr Clara Aranda Jan, Programme Lead for the Master’s in Digital Health and Entrepreneurship, said: “This was an exciting opportunity for our students to directly learn from and network with experienced leaders in their fields, to work on real-world healthcare challenges under time pressure, and to practice vital employability skills.”

We would like to offer a sincere thank you to our industry experts for making this event possible, and to our students for their fantastic efforts and enthusiasm! And, of course, a massive congratulations goes to our winners:

First Place - Eka 3 

• Sacha McLaughlin: MSc (Biotech and Pharmaceutical Management)
• Anitha Elaiyaalwar: MBA Health
• Tia Axam: MSc (Biotech and Pharmaceutical Management)
• Hawraa Saedi: MSc (Pharmaceutical Formulation and Entrepreneurship)

Second Place - IBM 1

• Gabriella Guo: Business and Health BSc/MSci
• Belove Shah: MBA Health
• Sagal Kairdon: MSc (Global Healthcare Management)

Third Place - IBM 2

• Haifa Alarrafah: MSc (Digital Health and Entrepreneurship)
• Mallika Kumar: MSc (Digital Health and Entrepreneurship)
• Anabelle Chikanma: Business and Health BSc/MSci
• Sayuri Padayachee: MSc (Digital Health and Entrepreneurship)
• Caroline Daw: MSc (Digital Health and Entrepreneurship)