Introduction
On May 20th, we hosted a hackathon to launch the HealthCloud by Slade360 platform—a centralized marketplace for healthcare software developers. The hackathon's main goal, with a clear eye on improving the patient experience, was to motivate developers to use our APIs to build "authentication services for patients".
Digital transformation has become a major force in altering how patients interact with healthcare systems as the healthcare landscape continues to change quickly. We recognized the significance of this paradigm shift and took the initiative to encourage creativity and teamwork among developers who were passionate about using technology to improve healthcare.
The teams were tasked with coming up with a Digital Patient Authentication solution that verifies and authenticates the identity of privately insured patients in a digital healthcare environment. This would ensure that the right individuals are accessing their electronic health records by employing a combination of secure login credentials and multi-factor authentication methods e.g. biometrics or a token-based authentication to validate a patient's identity.
The event was a 3-part session, split into:
Educational Sessions introducing REST APIs and the HealthCloud platform
Development session where the participants came up with solutions
The presentations and award ceremony.
During the morning debrief session, Savannah Informatics developers, utilizing the HealthCloud platform, provided guidance on understanding the concept of APIs, particularly REST APIs. They covered topics such as how REST APIs and GraphQL are used, and the benefits they offer, and provided an overview of how to get started with the HealthCloud APIs.
The attendees, formed teams of up to five members and collaboratively built three scalable solutions. These solutions aimed to address the challenge of authenticating and verifying insured members within the healthcare ecosystem.
Here are the amazing solutions that the participants came up with:
2nd Runners Up: Team G3
This solution was focused on authenticating and verifying patients' insurance details seamlessly within hospital settings by reducing administrative burdens and potential disputes between insured individuals, insurers, and medical institutions. The goal was to improve efficiency and accuracy in insurance verification. By doing so, there would be minimized instances of fraud, ensuring that only eligible patients with valid insurance are authorized for medical services. This would establish a centralized and secure database to maintain accurate records of patient interactions, including admissions, insurance details, billing information, and financial transactions.
1st Runners Up: Team Wema
Currently, over 2 billion people lack access to medication. There is an imbalance in accessing medications, especially for people living with chronic diseases and health practitioners are not incentivized to bring those medicines closer to the patients for better access.
Team Wema tackled how to make medication accessible. The team came up with a platform for insurance-holding patients to share prescriptions online, once the validity of the insurance is verified, registered Practitioners in their vicinity order and fulfill the orders.
Winners: Team Tambuzi
The team came up with a suite of solutions to help both the patient in getting access to their insurance information as well as getting easy access to care.
They did this by building a web portal called Tambuzi where patients would get a view of all their insurance information such as their benefits, their utilizations, and their dependant's data. The web portal also allowed patients to view providers near them where they can use their insurance, addressing the key challenge of accessibility.
To complement the web portal, the team also came up with an innovative WhatsApp chatbot that allowed patients to easily fetch their insurance information, getting to know their limits and utilizations by simply querying the bot. This solution stood out because it leveraged an existing tool, WhatsApp, that was already in the user's hands, and where many users spent their time.
Conclusion
We were delighted to witness the creative solutions developed by young innovators during the hackathon, as they made a significant impact on the healthcare industry. The event showcased the immense potential of leveraging technology to drive positive change in healthcare.
We encourage everyone to stay tuned for our upcoming hackathons, where we will continue to provide a platform for talented individuals to contribute their innovative ideas and skills. These hackathons offer a unique opportunity to collaborate, learn, and make a real difference in the healthcare sector.
By fostering an environment of creativity and collaboration, we aim to inspire the next generation of healthcare software developers and empower them to create transformative solutions. Join us as we continue to push the boundaries of innovation and shape the future of healthcare through technology.
Join our waiting list for the upcoming hackathon. Let’s innovate and change the Healthcare industry one API at a time.