RESC partners with HackaHealth community
ETH Zurich’s Competence Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering and Science (RESC) partners with the HackaHealth community, a team of engineers and friends on a mission to advance user-centred design approaches for assistive technologies.
HackaHealth is a community of engineers and friends from Zurich, Lausanne, and Geneva, motivated and passionate about health and medical technologies. The non-profit association aims to support the development of personalised solutions for people with disabilities, to improve their daily living. To pursue their vision, they launched their first hackathon in Geneva in 2018. In October 2021, three hackathons later, they organise the first assistive technology hackathon in Zurich, in addition to the Geneva edition.
Jan Thomas Meyer, organisation team member, is a PhD student at the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory (RELab) at ETH Zurich. With his voluntary engagement at HackaHealth, he aims to further promote user-centred design of assistive technologies. “We are very happy to welcome the RESC as a strong knowledge partner into our network”, Jan elaborates. “Our shared vision of promoting rehabilitation technologies for people with a movement impairment is a perfect fit. The RESC expands our outreach to motivated students, makers, and experts who can actively contribute to develop novel, impactful and user-centred assistive technology”.
Oliver Stoller, Executive Manager RESC: “With its innovative approach, HackaHealth fills an important gap in the design and development of user-centred solutions for individuals with disabilities. The partnership strengthens our network and boosts projects within the ‘inclusive technology’ field. RESC is looking forward to the collaboration.”
The ETH Competence Centre RESC is a nexus of expertise from academia, hospitals, industry, government, healthcare, disability organisations, and other NPOs. Its mission is to improve the quality of life and participation of people with physical disabilities; thus, contributing towards a more inclusive society. RESC promotes exchange, interdisciplinary research projects, innovative education programmes, and knowledge transfer.