Forge
Monthly Engineering Challenge Series
MedHack's monthly online engineering challenge series: real healthcare problems, solved from every engineering discipline.
Overview
Forge is MedHack's monthly engineering challenge series, designed to give engineering students regular opportunities to solve real-world healthcare problems through engineering and innovation. Operating entirely online, Forge bridges the gap between MedHack's flagship initiatives by fostering continuous learning, encouraging technical excellence, and maintaining an active engineering community throughout the year.
Unlike traditional hackathons that prescribe a specific technology or solution, Forge challenges participants to approach healthcare problems from the perspective of their own engineering discipline: software, hardware, process optimization, AI, simulations, or engineering design.
Ecosystem & the UAE
Forge is the always-on layer of MedHack's ecosystem: the monthly engine that keeps engineers building between flagship events.
In the ecosystem
Forge bridges MedHack's flagship hackathons, keeping the community active year-round and feeding tested talent and momentum into MedEngineers. It complements Bahath's clinical research arm: engineering solutions on one side, clinical evidence on the other, both aimed at real healthcare problems.
For the UAE
Forge builds a monthly habit of solving real UAE healthcare challenges, growing a nationwide pipeline of engineering talent oriented toward healthcare innovation, and giving partners a recurring, visible platform to back that talent throughout the year.
Challenge Philosophy
Every Forge challenge begins with a real-world healthcare problem. Rather than prescribing the type of solution, each challenge provides a comprehensive Challenge Brief presenting a healthcare issue that requires an engineering solution. Participants analyze the problem, identify opportunities for innovation, and propose the most appropriate solution based on their technical expertise, putting students from all engineering disciplines on equal footing.
Each Challenge Brief includes
- Background and context
- Problem statement
- Objectives
- Design constraints
- Deliverables
- Evaluation criteria
- Supporting resources (where applicable)
Example Challenge Brief · Medical Waste Management
- Background
- Hospitals generate significant amounts of medical waste every day. Inefficient segregation increases disposal costs, creates environmental concerns, and poses health and safety risks for healthcare workers and patients.
- Problem statement
- Design an engineering solution that improves the segregation, monitoring, or management of medical waste within healthcare facilities while remaining practical, scalable, and cost-effective.
- Objectives
- Improve waste management efficiency · reduce contamination risks · promote environmental sustainability · remain practical for real healthcare settings.
- Possible approaches
- Software platforms, smart waste monitoring, IoT sensors, mechanical sorting mechanisms, AI classification tools, process optimization models, embedded systems, simulations or digital twins.
Monthly Event Cycle
Forge operates on a monthly cycle, each month dedicated to a single engineering challenge.
Weeks 1–3 · Preparation Phase
Final Week · Competition Week
Participation
Participants may register in one of two ways:
Individual
Compete independently.
Team
Existing teams of up to four engineering students register together.
Forge does not assign participants to teams; team formation happens before registration. The competition is open to students from all engineering disciplines, encouraging diverse technical perspectives with a common focus on healthcare challenges.
Winner Recognition
Each monthly challenge recognizes one winning team, which receives:
- Official Forge Winner Certificate.
- Featured spotlight across MedHack's LinkedIn and social media platforms.
- Priority invitation to future MedEngineers flagship hackathons.
- Permanent recognition in the Forge Hall of Fame on the MedHack website; team, challenge, and solution preserved as part of the initiative's legacy.
- And more!