Bright Ideas competition with OKKO Health
Our MSc and CDT students recently took part in our first Bright Ideas competition, in partnership with OKKO Health.
The idea was to bring together students from our digital health programmes (from both tech and health backgrounds) to work collaboratively on a real-life challenge.
The competition saw OKKO Health’s Stephanie and Sally set a choice of two challenges, which the students worked on in small teams. They had two weeks to complete their chosen challenge, before pitching their ideas to OKKO Health.
Congratulations to the winning team: Francesca, Jiayu, John and Sydney! Here’s what they said about the experience:
Why did you decide to pick the challenge of ‘How might we prepare our product to enter the Japanese digital health market?’
As a team, we are keen to make digital technologies accessible for everyone, so we wanted to try to understand how one product can be adapted to two different demographics. We were intrigued to learn more about Japanese culture and how digital health might fit into it. It was also a great opportunity for us to understand more of the business background in a digital health company which is different from the kind of things we learn on the course.
Did you draw on your own academic background or personal experience to help to produce the competition entry?
We relied on the strong research skills we have built on throughout the course to ensure our proposals were evidence based. We had a mix of people from tech and health backgrounds, which is always a bonus as people bring different strengths to the team. For example, our entry was produced on Figma which, from a health background at least, seemed pretty intimidating to get to grips with. Had it not been for the difference in our backgrounds we would have never attempted that! Being able to bounce ideas off one another definitely contributed to our success.
What were the benefits of working on a real-life digital health challenge?
It undoubtably broadened our understanding of what digital health really means and helped us gain more of an understanding of how a digital health company operates in the ‘real world’ outside of academia. It gave us a new perspective of the challenges they face, some of which we hadn’t considered before.
How do you think this experience will help with your future academic or professional careers?
Since it was only a two-week challenge with this huge brief we had to learn how to generate and focus in on our own research questions. A lesson which will help in both academic and professional settings. Additionally learning about their product and others out there also got some of us thinking about what kind of company we see ourselves working for in the future.
Did you enjoy working for OKKO Health on this entry?
Yes, it was really good fun! The OKKO Health app itself was really cool and we can’t wait to see where the company goes in the future – especially if it's to Japan.
Our thanks to OKKO Health for partnering with us on Bright Ideas.