Hacking for Good: An Inspiring Day of AI Innovation for Paediatric Oncology!

On 29 October 2026, BSPHO, Google Cloud, and Google Research joined forces at Wintercircus in Ghent for “Solve with Google: Hacking for Good”, bringing together healthcare professionals and AI developers to tackle real challenges in paediatric oncology. And what a day it was!

The idea behind this hackathon was simple: bring together clinicians who understand the challenges of everyday patient care and AI experts with the technical skills and creativity to address them. By working side by side, the ambition was to move beyond discussing the potential of artificial intelligence and start developing practical solutions.

The energy and enthusiasm in the room were truly amazing! Throughout the day, teams worked intensively together, exchanging ideas, challenging assumptions and exploring innovative approaches to the clinical problems presented.

What was particularly impressive was the speed and quality of the results. All our clinical case leaders were genuinely surprised by how quickly the AI developers understood their challenges and came up with promising solutions. By the end of the day, we had moved far beyond initial ideas, with several solutions already at an unexpectedly advanced stage of development!

This experience demonstrated the tremendous potential of bringing together people with different but complementary expertise. AI can help healthcare professionals access and analyse complex medical information faster, reduce administrative burdens and support clinical decision-making, ultimately allowing them to devote more time to what matters most: their young patients.

This is only the beginning!

While the achievements of this single day exceeded our expectations, the real challenge now is to turn these promising prototypes into solutions that can make a difference in clinical practice.

We are therefore keen to build on the momentum generated during the hackathon and continue working with the teams and individuals interested in taking these projects further. The next step will be to refine, develop and ultimately finalise the most promising solutions.

A huge thank you to all the participants, the Google Cloud team, the organisers, coaches and our clinical case leaders for their enthusiasm, commitment and outstanding contributions. You made this day a remarkable success!

We are excited about what we have achieved together, and even more excited about what comes next.

We are looking forward to continuing this journey together!