A 4-hour hackathon at UC San Diego with the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, a biomedical technology entrepreneurship club. Student teams pair with a practicing clinician and use modern AI coding tools to turn real clinical problems into working prototypes before lunch.
A first-of-its-kind morning at UCSD: real clinical problems, brought by practicing physicians, prototyped by student teams using modern AI coding tools. The goal is to innovate healthcare through entrepreneurship and build an environment that fosters students' creativity, diversity, and unique talents.
Each team is paired with a clinician from SoPE who brings a healthcare problem they actually want solved. They bring the domain knowledge; you bring the code and the curiosity.
Modern AI coding tools are the assumed default, compressing what used to take weeks of dev work into a single morning. You're not racing the clock so much as showing what an AI-augmented team can actually ship in a focused window.
Engineers, entrepreneurs, designers, and researchers are all welcome; the clinician on your team handles the medical context so you can focus on the building.
There are roughly 50 total spots across about 12 teams, with the first 20 registrants free; additional spots open up as we bring on biotech and hospital sponsors. Food, mentorship, and prizes are included for everyone who participates.
The morning opens with clinicians from the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs presenting problems they actually want solved: workflows, patient-facing tools, diagnostics, anything where a working prototype could change a real day in the clinic.
Teams of 3–5 students plus a professional clinician work together with modern AI coding tools to take a clinical problem from idea to a demo-able prototype before noon, with students pulled from engineering, entrepreneurship, design, and wherever else makes sense for the problem in front of them.
The bar isn't a polished product; it's a prototype that runs, that addresses the clinician's real problem, and that your team can confidently explain end to end.
One Saturday morning, four hours, with a hard stop at noon. The rough breakdown is below; exact times will be confirmed closer to the event.
Arrive at DIB, grab coffee, meet your team and clinician.
Gold Winner of the Anthropic Claude Code Hackathon, giving a short talk that sets the tone for what AI-paced healthcare prototyping can actually look like in practice.
Teams work with modern AI coding tools to take their clinician's problem from idea to a runnable app, with mentors and faculty on the floor throughout to help unblock anyone who gets stuck.
Each team demos their prototype to the judging panel.
Prizes go out on the spot, and everyone's out the door by noon.
Still have questions? Contact us at eiec@ucsd.edu.