Health meets Tech hackathon opens Sep 10

A continentwide hackathon gets underway on September 10 to explore technologies and innovations that can impact on the continent.

In its sixth edition, the Health meets Tech hackathon is hybrid this year—part in person and part virtual– will feature participants from across Africa.

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“The initiative is designed to build an ecosystem of health and tech practitioners to design and deploy contextually relevant tech solutions across Africa,” the organisers said in a statement on Monday.

This year’s theme focuses on navigating healthcare post-COVID-19, with emphasis on developing tech solutions.

The meet will create a platform for health workers to work with developers, business persons and tech practitioners to develop viable solutions that will improve both population health and clinical care in the post-COVID-19 era.

“This year promises to be epic as we would be expecting the teams to come up with disruptive ideas on how technology can be used to accelerate and provide better healthcare services especially as we gradually begin to live in a post-COVID-19 world,” said Ifeanyi Nsofor, chief executive officer of EpiAFRIC.

TY Danjuma Foundation, which provides civil society organisations grants to implement homegrown interventions in states is partnering on the rollout of this year’s hackathon.

“Although, we are not yet out of the pandemic – we would be looking out for innovative projects that would help us bring to the forefront of the needs that are cause effective and cater for the needs of these challenging times.” Said Gima Forie, acting chief executive officer of the foundation.

Technology has become a common denominator to facilitate work in a post-pandemic world said Amina Dorayi, country director of Pathfinder International.

“I am excited by these possibilities that the hackathon will present to us in Nigeria and we look forward to innovations that will address the challenges of health access, quality and outcomes of care especially for women and young people,” said Dorayi.