The Dal Innovates Sandboxes — groups at Dalhousie University designed to facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration — have announced a Health Innovation Sprint event to encourage innovation in the healthcare field.

The sprint will last just over two weeks, with six work sessions, and require participants to identify a problem in healthcare and then develop a technological solution.

The sprint begins Tuesday with a discovery day and will end on March 17 with a demo day, where teams will have the chance to win $15,000 of funding and access to startup support services from the Sandboxes.

“The Dalhousie Health Innovation Sprint launches at a time where the rapid deployment and iteration of solutions in healthcare is an urgent need,” said Dalhousie in a press release.

“The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the identification of gaps and problems within local healthcare systems. The goal of this innovation sprint is to help accelerate the ideation and prototyping of solutions to said problems.”

Students and post-docs from any university can compete in the sprint, but only competitors from Dalhousie are eligible to receive the $15,000 prize.