Healthcare Laboratory Innovation Hackathon
A national innovation challenge developing transformative solutions for laboratory systems, infrastructure, and advanced diagnostics within the healthcare ecosystem.
Labathon 2026 is a national innovation challenge aimed at developing transformative solutions for laboratory systems, infrastructure, and advanced diagnostics within the healthcare ecosystem.
The hackathon brings together multidisciplinary teams — developers, data scientists, healthcare professionals, engineers, and innovation specialists — to address real-world laboratory challenges and prototype scalable digital and operational solutions.
Participants will work across three challenge tracks designed around key priorities in modern laboratory systems.
Pre-hackathon workshops are delivered in partnership with Saudi NIH.
.png){kind=logo}
Each track guides participants toward important problem areas in healthcare laboratory systems. Teams may propose digital, operational, workflow, governance, infrastructure, diagnostic, therapeutic, or service-model innovations — every key challenge is framed as a problem space with a focused “How might we” question. Select a track to explore its challenge areas.
This track focuses on strengthening the digital foundation of healthcare laboratories. Modern laboratories depend on multiple connected systems to manage test orders, process samples, report results, communicate with clinical teams, and support operational decisions. When these systems are fragmented, delayed, unreliable, or difficult to monitor, laboratory teams may face service disruption, manual workarounds, reporting delays, and increased operational risk. This track explores how laboratory digital systems can become more reliable, connected, visible, and responsive to the needs of laboratory professionals, clinicians, patients, and healthcare decision-makers.
When system issues are detected late, laboratories may experience delays, downtime, manual workarounds, and interruption of clinical services. Improve the ability to recognize early warning signs and reduce the impact of system-related disruptions.
Poor integration between instruments, LIS, EMR, referral platforms, and other healthcare systems creates duplicated work, manual data entry, delayed reporting, and increased risk of errors.
Teams need timely visibility into turnaround time, critical values, workload, bottlenecks, pending tests, and workflow efficiency — information that is often delayed, scattered, or difficult to interpret.
Support knowledge is spread across manuals, service histories, local experience, vendors, IT teams, and technical staff. Improve how teams access, use, and share technical knowledge to resolve issues consistently.
This track focuses on the operational and governance functions that enable laboratories to deliver reliable, safe, and efficient services. Laboratory performance depends on more than testing capability; it also requires effective management of supplies, workforce, equipment, biosafety, compliance, quality, and risk. Weaknesses in these areas can lead to service delays, testing interruptions, safety incidents, staff overload, increased cost, and reduced confidence in laboratory services. This track explores how laboratory operations can become more proactive, resilient, safe, efficient, and sustainable.
Shortages, overstocking, expired items, procurement delays, and limited inventory visibility can interrupt testing services and increase costs.
When staffing and workload distribution are not aligned with actual service needs, laboratories face delays, staff overload, burnout, quality risks, and inefficient use of expertise.
Monitoring biosafety, quality, accreditation, and compliance is difficult when processes rely on manual checklists, periodic audits, fragmented documentation, or delayed follow-up.
Equipment downtime, delayed maintenance, calibration issues, aging assets, underutilization, and limited performance visibility affect testing availability and cost efficiency.
This track focuses on improving access to advanced diagnostics, novel therapeutic laboratory procedures, and specialized laboratory services within the healthcare system. Advanced laboratory capabilities are increasingly important for precision medicine, complex disease management, early diagnosis, treatment selection, therapeutic support, and specialized clinical decision-making. However, these services may be affected by limited availability, unclear pathways, referral delays, dependency on external laboratories, limited interpretation support, specialized infrastructure needs, and fragmented capacity. This track explores how these services can become more accessible, coordinated, clinically useful, safe, and integrated into healthcare delivery.
In molecular diagnostics, genetics, pathology, microbiology, and other specialized services, delayed or inconsistent interpretation can affect diagnosis, treatment decisions, and patient outcomes.
Transfusion medicine, blood banking, stem cell processing, cellular therapies, apheresis, and tissue-related services require complex workflows, strict quality controls, specialized expertise, traceability, and advanced infrastructure.
Introducing novel diagnostics may be limited by validation requirements, workflow readiness, cost, clinician awareness, infrastructure, data interpretation, and integration into existing services.
Referral pathways to external or reference laboratories involve unclear requirements, manual coordination, sample transport challenges, limited tracking, and uncertainty about turnaround time.
Inappropriate test selection, duplicated requests, missed indications, or limited interpretation support can delay diagnosis, increase cost, and reduce the value of laboratory services.
Without coordination, healthcare systems face duplicated capacity, underused resources, unclear referral routes, variable turnaround times, and dependency on external laboratories.
Labathon brings together multidisciplinary teams to address real-world laboratory challenges and prototype scalable digital and operational solutions.
Ten stages take every team from the first announcement to the closing ceremony and beyond.
Register your team and take on one of three national laboratory innovation challenges.
The registration link will be activated once confirmed.The committee overseeing the scientific direction of Labathon 2026 will be announced soon.
Committee member
Committee member
Committee member
Committee member
Two online pre-hackathon webinars delivered in partnership with Saudi NIH on 7–8 September, followed by hands-on workshops during the hackathon days.
Delivered by Saudi NIH — Amal Aldulaigan. Preceded by the lab challenge briefing and followed by Q&A.
Delivered by CRL, followed by a tools introduction session and Q&A.
An onsite workshop within Day 1 of the hackathon.
Speaker to be announcedTurn your selected solution into a working prototype.
Speaker to be announcedApplying AI to healthcare laboratory challenges.
Speaker to be announcedFrom prototype to venture.
Speaker to be announcedTwo online pre-hackathon webinar days in partnership with Saudi NIH, followed by three onsite hackathon days at Fairmont Riyadh.
The challenge briefing and judging criteria session takes place on Day 1. Full criteria will be published here once approved.
Experienced mentors support teams through problem discovery, ideation, prototyping, and pitch refinement across all hackathon days. The lineup will be announced soon.
Mentor
Mentor
Mentor
Mentor
Final presentations are evaluated by an expert judging panel on Day 3. The panel will be announced soon.
Judge
Judge
Judge
Judge
