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Igniting Healthcare Innovation in Africa

 Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Initiative
Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Initiative
A new platform for Africans to tackle health on the continent that will focus on generating creative and innovative solutions that cut across disciplines and sectors has been launched by the University of Cape Town.

The Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Initiative (IHII), is a joint initiative of the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) and the UCT Faculty of Health Sciences.

Health24.com is the official media partner of the initiative
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The IHII will serve as a collaborative, cross-sectoral and trans-disciplinary platform and promote a needs-based, empathy-driven approach to healthcare innovation. Support for the initiative has been received from the National Department of Health and of Science and Technology, the South African Medical Research Council, and the Technology Innovation Agency.

To mark the launch of the Initiative, UCT will host two landmark events:

The Hacking Health 2014 healthcare innovation hackathon in Cape Town on 24 & 25 January 2014.  

The Inclusive Health Care Innovation Summit in Cape Town on 29 & 30 January 2014. 

The launch of the IHII comes at a time when health care in South Africa and Africa is facing a myriad of challenges in delivering care to those who need it most.

“The complexity of challenges faced in healthcare is calling for different paradigms of thinking and for the co-creation of new innovative solutions,” says Professor de Villiers, Dean, UCT Faculty of Health Sciences.

 “Now more than ever innovation is required to develop solutions that can improve the delivery of healthcare in Africa in an inclusive, effective and affordable manner.

These solutions must transcend current challenges in the system to improve health outcomes for patients but also to change the routines, responsibility and values of our health workers responsible for delivering the care.”

Director of the GSB, Professor Walter Baets says, “Together with the initiative’s partners, participants of the summit, and actors in the healthcare system, new innovative solutions for a healthier African future can be pioneered.”

The IHII will be based in the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the GSB and in the Department of Medicine at UCT and Groote Schuur Hospital.

For any queries about the Initiative please contact Dr Lindi van Niekerk at lindi.vanniekerk@gsb.uct.ac.za / Tel:  072 236 2079

Registrations for the Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Summit are now open! To register go to www.inclusivehealth.co.za.

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