Department Of Health, Danat Al Emarat Organise Pregnancy-focussed Health Hackathon

Department of Health, Danat Al Emarat organise pregnancy-focussed health hackathon

ABU DHABI, (Pakistan Point News - 26th Feb, 2021) In line with UAE’s Innovation Week, the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH) and Danat Al Emarat Hospital have kicked off the third edition of the healthcare hackathon "PREG-A-THON" today.

With the support of DoH’s AI Lab, United Eastern Medical Services (UEMedical) and microsoft, the two-day hackathon is being held virtually, bringing together researchers, students, and practitioners forming a community around an innovative resource to find solutions for managing pregnancy complications.

The hackathon hosts several speakers from DoH’s AI Lab and various physicians from the hospital discussing a wide range of topics with a focus on a safe and healthy pregnancy through several panel discussions and group activities.

The hackathon aims to create and develop innovative programmes to manage pregnancy complications proactively at the hospital. These programmes will contribute to further enhancing the specialised healthcare services provided to pregnant women while helping healthcare experts achieve better clinical outcomes.

Dr. Jamal Mohammed Alkaabi, Under-Secretary of the DoH, said, "Innovation has always been one of our core priorities at the Department of Health. We are keen to transform the way healthcare is delivered across Abu Dhabi by using innovation and research to power truly sustainable solutions. To that end, we are pleased to be collaborating with the hospital in organising this unique hackathon, which employs a novel approach to tackle issues and find solutions that can help manage complications faced during pregnancy."

"With each edition, the healthcare hackathon focuses on a certain medical topic that helps instil a culture of innovation in Abu Dhabi’s healthcare sector and stimulate the adoption of AI," Al Kaabi added.

Majd Abu Zant, Acting CEO of UEMedical, said, "Such valuable initiatives have a positive impact on the diagnostic, curative and preventative healthcare services provided to members of the community. Multiple innovative solutions will be the outcome of this two-day hackathon, which will focus on the prevention and early detection of pregnancy problems; and managing them for improved outcomes. These solutions will be turned into actual programmes to be executed at Danat Al Emarat," Abu Zant added.

Dr. Mohaymen Abdelghany, CEO of Danat Al Emarat Hospital, said, "Danat Al Emarat Hospital was one of the first hospitals to have a dedicated department and team for innovation and excellence for over two years, which aims to create an ecosystem to test new technologies and new approaches to deliver better results and innovation for development."

Dr. Abdelghany added, "Each competing team consists of five individuals including a doctor, a nurse, a programmer/a designer, an app developer and a data specialist from the UAE and outside the country. Each team works collectively to develop an innovative programme to improve the services provided to pregnant women and eliminate any related potential problems. The winning team will be announced at the end of the second day of the hackathon and will not only win a prize but will also have the opportunity to have their innovative solution/application implemented at the hospital."

The first edition of the health hackathon brought by the DoH’s AI lab in 2019 focused on creating and developing innovative solutions to manage chronic diseases, one of the current challenges facing the healthcare sector today, whereas the second edition focused on the management of respiratory diseases and coming up with innovative solutions and empowering technology and data science to contribute to reducing the risks of spreading them as these respiratory diseases are among the most common diseases in the UAE.