Preliminary Programme 

Wednesday, 11 November 12:00 – 20:00 (Pre-Summit) 

Kick-off session for selected teams to meet, align, and begin developing their projects. 
Further details on the location and the schedule will be shared soon. 

Friday, 13 November 

Team presentations in front of an expert jury during a dedicated session at the ESC Digital and AI Summit 2026.

The winning team receives the ESC Hackathon Award 2026, during the Summit’s closing session. 

Who should apply? 

We welcome a diverse range of profiles, including: 

  • Cardiologists, MDs, , Cardiac Surgeons
  • Scientists, Nurse Practitioners, Patients
  • Managers, MBA's, IT- and Digital Health specialists
  • Software developers & AI engineers Health data scientists & ML specialists
  • UX/UI designers
  • Product managers
  • Entrepreneurs & startup founders
  • Researchers & PhD candidates (at any stage of their carreer)
  • Legal and policy experts in AI governance 

A total of 25 participants will be selected, forming 5 multidisciplinary teams of 5 members. 

How to get involved 

Step 1: Call for topics – closed

Submissions are now closed. Selected topics (5 total) will be announced soon. 
The jury will select topics based on excellence, feasibility, originality and impact.

Step 2: Call for participants - now open!

Five hackathon topics have been selected for the ESC Digital & AI Summit 2026 Hackathon. Participants may apply to up to two topics, and places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Key Dates
Application deadline: 7 September
Results announced by email: by 14 September

Explore the Hackathon Topics

  • Real-Time Operating Room Time Prediction: Can AI improve surgical scheduling in real time? Build a system that predicts and continuously updates the expected duration of cardiac surgery using patient information, physiological monitoring, surgical events, imaging, and other available data. The goal is to help surgical teams make better use of operating room time through more accurate, real-time predictions.
  • Virtual Heart Team: Develop an AI-powered platform that prepares cases for multidisciplinary Heart Team meetings. By organizing referral information, identifying missing diagnostic data, and presenting a complete patient overview, the solution should reduce administrative work and help teams spend more time on clinical decision-making.
  • Multimodal AI Prediction of Postoperative Atrial Fibrillation: Create an explainable AI model that predicts the risk of postoperative atrial fibrillation after cardiac surgery. Participants will combine clinical data, laboratory results, ECGs, echocardiography, and imaging to explore how multimodal data can improve risk prediction and support more personalized perioperative care.
  • Building the Complete Echo Picture: Design an interactive platform that brings together the many data sources contained within an echocardiography examination. By integrating ultrasound images, Doppler recordings, ECG signals, measurements, and annotations into a single view, participants will create new ways to explore and understand complex cardiac imaging data.
  • TrialMatch AI – Turning Every Patient Encounter into a Research Opportunity: Develop an AI-powered clinical trial matching system that automatically identifies eligible patients during routine clinical care. By integrating with the hospital information system and continuously screening structured patient data against recruiting studies, the solution should notify physicians of relevant trial opportunities, both locally and at other centers, helping more patients access innovative therapies while reducing the burden of manual trial searches.

Ready to take part?

Submit your application now and join a multidisciplinary team working on one of the selected hackathon challenges.

Apply today

Application deadline: 7 September - First-come, first-served basis.