Sandoz HACk Competition Enters Social Engagement Phase

Following the submission of over 150 ideas from all over the world, the Sandoz HACk – Healthcare Access Challenge, is now in phase two of the competition, in which six finalists and their ideas for how to improve access to healthcare in their communities.

Feb 14, 2017

Following the submission of over 150 ideas from all over the world, the Sandoz HACk – Healthcare Access Challenge, is now in phase two of the competition, in which six finalists and their ideas for how to improve access to healthcare in their communities. Sandoz HACk is a competition seeking young people with innovative ideas to “reimagine” access to healthcare. Each finalist will receive feedback and support from Sandoz experts and then be judged by a panel of internal and external experts at WIRED Health 2017 in London. Three winners will be selected and receive seed funding and additional expert support to help make their access to healthcare ideas become reality.

The finalists are:

  1. Dr Iffat Zafar, Pakistan: DocHers – Connecting female doctors to marginalized women in rural Pakistan to provide affordable health care via CMW Assisted mobile consultation
  2. Saif Ali, Pakistan: MedMee - Digitizing the healthcare industry to eradicate Medical & Medication errors via modern-day technologies like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
  3. Mohamed Shuraih, Maldives: Blood Drive – A social platform that encourages you to save lives through the gift of blood.
  4. Johannes Mangane, South Africa: PillDrop – Increasing access of medicines through established transport systems
  5. Elvin Blankson, Ghana: Pharmacy Connect – Providing access to quality healthcare in under-served areas by leveraging mobile technology and Innovative staffing
  6. Joel Alejandro, Philippines: Save-a-life app – We aim to build a community of lifesavers capable and motivated to administer CPR anywhere and anytime

Each finalist posted their access to healthcare idea on OpenIDEO, an open innovation platform aimed at solving big challenges for social good. The OpenIDEO platform exposed the finalists to a broad range of technology, creative and social entrepreneurial specialists who were able to support the development of the ideas. Just go to OpenIDEO to read each finalist’s story and learn about their idea to hack healthcare.

Why is Sandoz HACk needed?

Despite significant advances made by modern medicine, universal access to healthcare is still arguably the single largest unmet medical need.

More than two billion people worldwide cannot access the medicines they need and more than 400 million lack access to essential health services. The combined efforts of stakeholders across both public and private sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry, not-for-profit organizations and governments have made significant advances in tackling healthcare access challenges worldwide. But these large scale systemic initiatives need to be supported by community-led change, driven by innovative small scale solutions that can make a big difference. This is why Sandoz is hosting Sandoz HACk, inviting people to generate novel solutions to tackle key healthcare access challenges in local communities.

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