What do you get when you have over 1000 technology developers, healthcare professionals, and medical practitioners working together on a specific problem in the same room? You get what’s called a health-care hackathon. One of the world’s first movers in the pantheon of hackathon, is Leo Exter, the creative force behind Hack Belgium, a massive EU Open Innovation Festival, and one the most ambitious event of its kind for the last decade. With the impact of COVID-19, hackathons have needed to evolve, and Leo is now the Chief Energizer at Hack Belgium Labs. We’re speaking to him today, along with Thomas Vande Casteele, the CEO of the promising EU health Tec company, Awell Health. You can register for this year’s addition of Hack Healthcare on the 2nd and 3rd of March, 2021, at HackBelgiumLabs.be In this podcast we discuss the challenges of COVID-19 on the tech innovation culture, and the opportunities that are presented by bottom-up innovation driving adoptions. As well, we highlight the need for the greater use of real world data for healthcare improvement, in ways not often implemented by governments, BioPharma companies, or practitioners.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.