Hacking healthcare innovation: MUSC and Notable host Flowjam hackathon

Companies with an innovation culture—those that foster collaboration and grant autonomy to their teams—are 60% more likely to be innovation leaders. This holds true for the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), with its 200-year legacy of innovation and its use of cutting-edge technology to revolutionize and enhance healthcare. 

MUSC and Notable both recognize that innovation often comes from within, by listening to those who deal with an industry’s pain points and administrative challenges day in and day out. To champion this internal innovation, the two organizations co-hosted MUSC’s first-ever Flowjam hackathon, a two-day boot camp designed to improve healthcare workflows and processes to drive efficiency and transform the patient experience.

The Flowjam event

As part of South Carolina’s annual Innovation Awareness Month, this hands-on event brought together more than 20 MUSC clinical, operational, and IT innovators and Notable’s engineering team to solve real health care challenges through AI and automation.

MUSC team members were trained to use Notable’s low-code Flow Builder interface. Then, they participated in ideation workshops to identify operational and clinical workflow pain points that can be addressed using automation, pitching their ideas “Shark Tank” style to a judging panel. 

The outcomes

The results from just 48 hours of collaboration were incredible. The winning pitch—a patient-facing tool for pre-op medication guidance that checks medications and delivers customized instructions to ensure surgical safety—was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Other ideas focused on smarter scheduling, faster check-ins, care gap closures, and other automated processes to improve the patient and provider experience.

“It was incredibly inspiring to see the excitement on the participants’ faces as they realized how easily they could solve real-world problems using Flow Builder,” said Tom Alterman, Head of Product at Notable. “We had people who had only ever used ChatGPT once or twice playing around with voice AI by the end of the first day. You just can’t get that with other healthcare AI interfaces.”

“We saw firsthand how quickly AI tools can improve care coordination, education, patient satisfaction, and even revenue impact — all while reducing staff workload,” said Crystal Broj, Chief Digital Transformation Officer at MUSC Health. “We’re already planning a summer FlowJam reunion and mini onsite jams across MUSC. Innovation is definitely in the air.”

Innovating from within

The future of healthcare will be built by those closest to the work, and this Flowjam hackathon illustrates how a culture that encourages innovation and collaboration can streamline operations and change patient experiences for the better.

Interested in hosting your own Flowjam hackathon event? Contact our team to find out more.