MISSOULA — Medical professionals from across the country met at the University of Montana to brainstorm ideas on how to solve the health care problems of rural communities.
The event, called Hacking Rural Medicine, included a competition called a “rural medicine hackathon” where teams developed ideas for a new tool or product to help solve a problem experienced by the rural medical community.
Terry Hill, executive director of the National Rural Health Resource Center, which works with the federal government to help rural areas, said the technology industry has been able to innovate rapidly because of a large amount of collaboration from its professionals and companies, something health care needs to begin to emulate.
“If you really want to improve the health of citizens, you have to do it together,” Hill told the Missoulian. “Right now, we’re paying for procedures rather than for making people healthy.”
Event organizer Monica Bourgeau of the Frontier Medicine Better Health Partnership said rural communities have different health issues than urban ones, including the distance to travel for care, and a lack of physicians in many smaller communities.
After mingling with the other participants, members were invited to pitch an idea to the crowd, with the hope of forming a team to work with for the remainder of the weekend.
Dr. Gabe Charbonneau, a family practice doctor from Stevensville, explained his idea for a new online social network built around connecting medical professionals that could advise and inspire one another.
In addition to being a place to get professional assistance, his vision was also for a place to get doctors back to why they got into medicine to begin with.
“If we want medicine to get better, we have to bring back why we love it,” he said.
John Rehmeyer of Kentucky, executive director of A-OPTIC, which starts rural residency programs in the Appalachian area, said most residents end up practicing within 100 miles of their residency program.
His pitch was to find a way to establish more residencies in areas that are experiencing a shortage of physicians.
A panel of judges was to award cash prizes based on the strength of the idea and how realistic it is to implement.