Why do we wait until it is too late to ask for help?

A hackathon is a design sprint-like event in which people come together and collaborate intensively on projects over a set time frame.

Over 80 people including high school and UNE students, UNE Health/ Business staff, industry experts, farmers, producers and a team of 20 engineers and developers from IT networking company CISCO, who travelled from Sydney all came together to look at ‘Tech solutions for socially relevant Agribusiness ‘grassroots’ challenges’. A totally new experience, but one that I was pleased to say yes to helping and being involved.

While the day was aimed at Farmers our problem statement would be relevant with any demographic, particularly the construction industry!

At the start of the day 8 people were asked to give a brief introduction about themselves, their business and why they had chosen their problem statement.

Small teams then got down to business with the help of mentors who spent time with each of the teams throughout the day helping to tease out ideas and solutions to our problems.

We identified that lack of tools and education leads to declining wellbeing and came up with a number of reasons why we wait until it is too late to ask for help. Pride, Stigma, trusted support, accessibility, education and personal responsibility were the ones that stood out especially for men.

Our solution is to have every Australian male over the age of 18 have an annual lifestyle health check-up. We need to catch people before their health conditions become chronic.

At 4pm we all reassembled in the lecture theatre at the UNE Smart Farm and in front of 5 judges in a “Shark-Tank” like environment, including the UNE Chancellor, a renowned national agricultural PR expert and 2 senior Executives from CISCO we had 3 minutes to deliver our pitch….

This was ours;

I wish technology like we have now was around when my parents were in their 30’s and 40’s and when my young mate Scotty was struggling with his health. We lost him 4 years ago with mental health issues.

Our team PromptMate today has done an amazing job to develop a simple app to alert and prompt you to have your annual “grease and oil change” health check-ups.

The app taps you on the shoulder to touch base with a GP to maintain balance of life and connects you with other health professionals skilled to catch signs that you and technology can’t.

The app will be promoted via community causes and includes space for responsible advertising from healthcare and community partners.

Out initial target market is the 30-40 age group, those guys that think they are 10 foot tall and bullet proof. But would not mind another app on their phone.

Can I ask you all to get out your phone and go to the app store and download Promptmate.

I only wish Scotty was sitting in your seat 4 years ago and had the same opportunity you have!

The Result?

We won….. Now to realise our vision!