DASH Event

National Canadian Medical Datathon 2026

March 7 - March 8, 2026

National Canadian Medical Datathon 2026

This year’s datathon brought together 70 participants from across medicine, data science, and technology for a weekend of interdisciplinary collaboration and healthcare innovation. Participants included undergraduate trainees (65.7%), graduate students (30.0%), and professionals (4.3%), representing disciplines such as medicine (51.4%), AI/data science (22.9%), computer science (10.0%), and other fields including cognitive science, biomedical sciences, health outcomes research, engineering, statistics, and kinesiology.

Teams worked across beginner, intermediate, and advanced streams, analyzing real-world healthcare datasets on breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes, ICU outcomes, liver disease, general internal medicine, and cervical fracture CT imaging. Participants were supported by technical mentors and kicked off the event with an introductory workshop from ShiftKey Labs to guide data exploration and analysis.

Over two days, interdisciplinary teams developed innovative data-driven solutions and presented their projects to a panel of judges, evaluated on clinical relevance, data methodology, insights, innovation, and communication. Students joined from Vancouver and Prince George, highlighting growing interest in collaborative data science education across the province.

This year’s datathon is part of a national collaboration with Queen’s University, McMaster University, Memorial University (MUN), and Dalhousie University. The top team from each school will advance to the national competition, where projects will be presented and evaluated across institutions.

We are grateful for our UBC judges: Dr. Anita Palepu, Dr. Aline Talhouk, Dr. Najib Ayas

Many thanks for our mentors: Adam Mitha, Armaghan Savar, Ryan Sandoval, Dr. Mahmoodur Rahman, Nazanin Yousefzade 

Congratulations to the top 3 presentations:

  • First place:
    • Team 2 — Jody Tao, Alex Kuzma-Hunt, Aman Sharma, Coralie Tcheune, Zeid Hamadeh, Mark Christopher)
  • Second place:
    • Team 1 — Qi Zuo, Amit Sharma, Rohan Birk, Ripdaman Malhans, Ethan Chen, Joshan Gill)
  • Third place (tied):
    • Team 6 — Diana Dadkhah Tirani, Victoria Farkas, Gurveer Madurai, Nandini Krishnan, Derrick Jaskiel, Rachel Chiu
    • Team 15 — Bronwyn Moore, Crystal Leung, Jeenat Mehareen, Ramin Rezaeianzadeh, Yasith Samarasinghe

Thank you to all participants, mentors, judges, and partners who made this event possible.

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  • DASH Event

Data Science and Health

10th Floor, Diamond Health Care Centre, 2775 Laurel Street
Vancouver, BC Canada V5Z 1M9

Research Excellence Clusters at UBC Vancouver is a joint initiative of the Provost and Vice-President, Academic, UBC Vancouver and the Vice-President, Research and Innovation. Funding support for the clusters is provided by Academic Excellence Funds – UBC Vancouver.

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