A centralised vehicle fleet management system is one step closer for New England health-provider HealthWISE thanks to the first Innovate for Impact Hackathon AI Hackathon.
Hosted by NGM Group, the customer-owned organisation behind Greater Bank and Newcastle Permanent, Innovate for Impact brought over 200 employees, technology partners and University of Newcastle and TAFE students together across two days to develop solutions for three charity partners.
Participants were tasked with creating scalable solutions to improve service awareness and efficiency for each charity, with Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation HealthWISE and Lake Macquarie & Newcastle Suicide Prevention Network challenging participants.
Multiple prizes were handed out over the two days, with the winning teams receiving the lifechanging opportunity to experience a ‘Day at Microsoft’.
HealthWISE is a Tamworth-based community-led health services provider working across rural and remote NSW and southern Queensland.
Presenting the need of a centralised, device-agnostic booking system for the HealthWISE vehicle fleet, the winning solution developed a web-based app that is a one-stop-shop to manage trip logbooks, fuel receipt capture and the status of each vehicles’ registration, insurance and services. Importantly, offline availability of trip logbooks was developed to manage low-connectivity in regional areas.
HealthWISE Manager of Information and Communication Technology Michael Gill said that Hackathon was a wonderful opportunity for their not-for-profit.
“Being given the opportunity to present a problem that we’ve had internally for quite a while and see a whole group of great teams that are working on a challenge that we presented to them brings a lot of value to an organisation like HealthWISE,” he said.
“It’s difficult for us to find funding to fork out for large projects, so to have this opportunity is amazing.”
NGM Group Chief Information Officer Andrew Cresp said he was thrilled with the success of the event.
“We are proud to have held the first Hackathon event of its kind in Newcastle. At NGM Group, we have become a leader in the regional NSW technology sector, embracing innovation and practical adoption tools such as AI to help our people work smarter and deliver better outcomes,” Andrew said.
“It was incredible to watch some of the brightest young minds and experienced heads join forces to bring some meaningful outcomes for our charity partners.
“As a customer-owned bank we are here to serve our communities, so it is really important to us to develop technology solutions that have a real-world impact.”
The event also featured lightning talks from Microsoft, GitHub and Arinco, and technology experts from NGM Group and the University of Newcastle.