Heart Hackathon: How Hydrix is supporting the next generation of Biomedical Engineers

Hydrix is proud to be a founding sponsor of the Heart Hackathon, an international, student-led design competition that aims to nurture and inspire the next generation of cardiovascular technology innovators.

We believe this competition is crucial in addressing Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), the world’s leading cause of death. In supporting the Heart Hackathon challenge, Hydrix is providing technical guidance, participating in webinars and workshops, mentoring student groups and working to ensure the inaugural competition is a success.

This competition will provide students with a wealth of knowledge, celebrate their innovative solutions, provide valuable networking opportunities, and inspire a new wave of innovators and engineers.

The student-led teams will design, prototype, and evaluate their total artificial heart, competing with teams from across the globe.

Students are encouraged to follow real-life stages when developing a TAH including ideation, prototyping, simulations, and benchtop testing. They will need to demonstrate that their TAH can deliver 5 litres per minute at appropriate systemic and pulmonary pressures which is the same flow rate and pressures to support a human. Beyond this requirement, teams have complete freedom over how they approach the design challenge.

During this competition, students will have a chance to develop good practice in reporting and scientific communication whilst documenting testing using suitable pre-clinical evaluation techniques such as –

• Numerical simulations
• In-vitro evaluations
• Biocompatibility testing

We encourage all students from all disciplines to participate!