TiE announces Med4Dev healthcare solutions hackathon in India and Israel

TiE, a non-profit global community for entrepreneurs has announced the Israel-India Med4Dev Hackathon that will convene innovators, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, designers, engineers, programmers and business professionals over a three day period in up to four locations (Tel Aviv, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai) in order to develop innovative ideas and prototype solutions (hardware and software) to address healthcare challenges of low and lower-middle income communities in India. It will be held from 22 July to 24 July, 2016. The Med4Dev website explains that this seed a pipeline of viable future ventures in both countries. The hackathon will enable sponsoring partners to identify promising ideas. The hackathon partnership structure will include a full range of partners in Israel and India that will provide mentoring support following the hackathon for teams with viable venture ideas, acceleration and eventual access to potential early-stage investors. The organisers expect Indian and Israeli engineers, entrepreneurs, product designers, healthcare professionals to participate. “We aim for a minimum of 25 percent needs-knowers (healthcare professionals). In addition, we wish to recruit Israeli corporate teams that will use the hackathon to explore adaptation of existing medical technologies to meet the needs of the affordable healthcare sector in India. Teams will be supported by several dozen mentors, who will provide both on-site mentoring and virtual cross-location mentoring,” explains the website. There will be two tracks to source the challenges: a sponsored track where Indian healthcare providers will provide prizes for innovations in various areas; and, an adaptation track for Israeli companies that will work with Indian participants. The website also informs that both before and during the hackathon, participants will be able to connect with mentors and with each other through a common online platform. The online platform will provide a dedicated YouTube channel presenting challenges, an area for dialogue and exchange on both sponsored and participant-led challenges, a platform for communication between participants for team formation and brainstorming, a Q&A forum and knowledge platforms for webinars, video conferences, podcasts etc. The platform will also provide mentors profiles and system for requesting virtual consultations. Whether based in India or Israel, teams with the most promising ideas will be able to continue to develop their ventures with a package of support including cash prizes for the challenge winners, several months of mentoring, the possibility of joining either the Pears Challenge accelerator in Israel in November 2016 or a parallel program in India, and subsequent to the accelerator, access to seed funding.