The organization started off in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2012[citation needed] with a weekend-long hackathon to encourage collaboration between healthcare professionals and IT experts.
These shorter, casual events help interested parties stay up-to-date on local collaborations, projects and start-ups.
Hacking Health has spread globally since 2013 to Cape Town,[14][15] Strasbourg,[16] Hong Kong, Zurich, Bucharest, and Detroit.
2013 Strasbourg (France) 2014 2015 2016 2017 Hacking Health has been the start of several innovative mHealth research and implementation projects to improve healthcare.
In the Netherlands, the Participatient project to engage patients in catheter infection prevention, started at Dutch Hacking Health 2016.