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AMIU Health Entrepreneurship Academy and Innovation Centre
Hackathon
Theme: Intersection of AI, Climate Change and PHC
July 14th – November 14th, 2023
AMIU Health Entrepreneurship Academy and Innovation Centre Background
The AMIU Enterprise Development and Innovation Center provides students, health workers and health care entrepreneurs opportunities to develop their entrepreneurial skills, connect, collaborate and share knowledge and networks in an ecosystem where talent is plentiful but opportunities are few. The Center creates a community of health entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystem that enable them to connect with each other and access the resources that they need. It focuses on building entrepreneurial culture among AMIU students and health care workers with an aim of making them job creators and not only job seekers. The Center supports early stage health entrepreneurs, to commercialize and operate sustainable enterprises. One of the initial activities for the Center’s is running a hackathon themed; The Intersection between AI, Climate Change and Health in Primary Health settings.
Over the years, climate change due to increased greenhouse house gases has led to increased temperatures, change in precipitation and climate change extreme events. Negatively affecting human environment in relation to air, food, water, shelter, social infrastructure, and changes in infectious disease agents leading to exacerbation of respiratory diseases, nutrition-related conditions, physical and psychological trauma, vector-borne diseases and neglected tropical diseases.
This hackathon focuses on leveraging AI innovations to address complex challenges arising from climate change and their impact on human health. Climate change and their impact on human health. Climate change intensifies the urgency to develop innovative solutions that utilize AI to mitigate environmental risks and safeguard public health.
HACKATHON BACKGROUND
The hackathon is an initiative of AMIU Health Entrepreneurship Academy and Innovation Center and will run for four months, from July to November 2023. The theme of the hackathon is, ‘Intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change and Primary Health Care’.
Hackathon Goal: To identify AI solutions that address PHC challenges which are caused and/or worsened by climate change.
Hackathon Problem Statement
What solutions does AI provide to resolve primary health care challenges aggravated by climate change?
Climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions. WHO estimates that, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress. The threats posed by climate related stresses could create breaking-point conditions on such care and affect key parts of primary care services such as facilities, human resources and supply chains.
How can AI equipped technologies improve primary health care outcomes that have been dulled by climate change? How could adoption of AI give incredible insights and healthcare solutions in the face of climate change which is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in food- water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues.
Target
The hackathon targets two sets of participants/audience;
- University and college students; they will participate in teams of 3-5, drawn from the same university or different universities.
- Early startups in health care; these categories of participants will constitute health care early startups (the ones which have not existed for more than 5 years)
Expected outcomes:
- Development of AI driven solutions to PHC challenges which are associated to climate change
- Provision of support for the three most innovative solutions (seed capital and technical support to help early startups accelerate and scale)
- Creation of an ecosystem that establishes a collaboration between the industry and institutions of higher learning, in the fight against the effects of climate change on PHC
HACKATHON SCHEDULE
