The Ugandan Academy for Health Innovation and Impact will on March 19th and 20th hold the second Health Innovation Conference in Uganda at the Kampala Serena Hotel.
What is The Health Innovation Conference?
The inaugural Health Innovations conference was held in March 2018 and attracted a large audience of government representatives, medical professionals, researchers, students, IT professionals and the media, among others. Highlights included a session on Blockchain in Health, lightening talks by young researchers, and speakers such as Hon Elioda Tumwesigye, Dr Alex Coutinho among others. In this year’s edition, The Ugandan Academy hopes to bring together an even richer group of over 250 stakeholders from various sectors considering the diversity of the programme and scope. The riveting line-up will cover most of the aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution . The conference will be housed by the Ugandan Academy for Health Innovation and Impact, a project housed within the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) and established in 2015 from an MOU between Ministry of Health, Infectious Diseases Institute, Janssen, the Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson and the Johnson & Johnson Corporate Citizenship Trust. The Ugandan Academy’s core function is to improve health outcomes for people living with or affected by HIV and TB through innovations in clinical care, capacity building, system strengthening and research, which inform policy and practice. Related Article: This is Mirembe Bot, Uganda’s first Artficially intelligent health advisor
What to expect?
The Health Innovations Conference will create opportunities to initiate collaborative efforts in Health Innovation. This year’s theme is: “Sustainable Health for all: Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” which generally focuses on how various aspects of new, old, high and lo-tech can effectively be used to improve health. It will cover four areas;
Accelerating innovations into practice No people left behind-‘Lo-tech and the last mile’ People, processes and products Arts for health and social change.
Some of the speakers include Kwame Rugunda, Chairman Block chain Association Uganda, Ian Clarke, Chairman Clarke Group, Mike Tartakovsky, Chief Executive Officer, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Carol Kyozira, Ag. Assistant Commissioner (DHI), Ministry of Health (MOH). The conference will also showcase the establishment of a bioinformatics unit in Uganda funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). This unit is provisionally named the African Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics (ACE). First of its kind in the region and based at the IDI Makerere University premises, the ACE will be a center for computational biology and big data analysis. This laboratory will be launched on 21st March, 2019.
How to Participate?
To showcase how technology can be used for sustainable health for all, Andela Uganda is proposing to spearhead a public Hackathon around “Technology or all, no one left behind”. The IDI-Andela Health Hackathon (#AndelaHealthHack) will be held at the Serena Hotel, over 2 days. It will bring together techies, from both Andela and the wider tech ecosystem, with health professionals for 17 hrs non-stop hacking. The aim of #AndelaHealthHack is to create mobile-based solutions around sustainable health for all; with the top 3 teams receiving grant writing support from the IDI team and a cash prize. Registration to participate in the hackathon can be done online here: http://bit.ly/AndelaHealthHack. Tickets can be got at The Kampala Serena Hotel at 100 US Dollars or online. Just scan the code on the graphic below and you will generate a ticket for your payment
Innovation is a way of finding new ways to solve problems and increase productivity. The Health Innovation Conference is geared towards promoting Innovation in the healthcare system.
