The National Health Authority is going to host its first open-to-all hackathon series to drive ideation and innovations around different components of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).
The series will begin with 'Round 1: Kick-starting Unified Health Interface', slated for July 14-17, the NHA said in a statement. The hackathon will be focused on the Unified Health Interface (UHI) and aim at mobilizing the health start-up ecosystem in India and bringing together individuals and organizations to develop solutions through UHI, it said.
The hackathon will provide an excellent opportunity for innovators, data experts, and developers from all over the world to collaborate and build innovative solutions for providing access to digital health services through UHI, the statement said.
UHI is designed as an open network to enable inter-operable transactions of digital health services such as teleconsultation. Through UHI, patients can discover, book, conduct, and pay for services offered by a variety of participating providers from any application of their choosing. This stands in contrast to the current model of digital health service delivery where patients and doctors must transact using a common application or platform, the NHA statement said.
Announcing the hackathon series, NHA CEO R S Sharma said, "India has enabled the creation of some of the most efficient public delivery systems in the world, as has been witnessed through JAM and UPI, by breaking silos and unlocking network effects." ABDM and UHI will enable the same for the healthcare ecosystem and this hackathon series will enable players to collaborate and build solutions that define the future of healthcare, according to the statement.
Round one of the series will focus on two major themes -- innovation track and integration track, the statement said. Under the innovation track, there will be challenges for innovative solutions to power digital health in an open network around various use cases such as teleconsultation, ambulance booking, lab tests, physical consultation booking, and lab tests booking. The integration track will be a challenge to accelerate the development of applications that are compatible with UHI and integrate these applications with the applications of other such participants to enable digital health transactions on the UHI network.
The tentative prize pool for round one is Rs 60,00,000. This shall be awarded to the top performers on each challenge track.
"Further, as part of the UHI hackathon, NHA shall be organizing master classes to further the participants' understanding of the ABDM ecosystem. The details about upcoming master classes, challenge statements, prizes under each category, and other updates shall be posted on the ABDM website," the statement added.
