Muzinda-Umuzi Hack for Health hackathon produces 6 apps

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Last week Muzinda-Umuzi played host to the the Hack for Health hackathon and a report from Muzinda-Umuzi says that the programmers managed to develop 6 apps for the health services sector.

Techzim attended the first day of the hackathon and gave an update here.

There was generally low turnout presumably because it was held during weekdays days but for some reason, Muzinda-Umuzi has come out and said they are “seriously considering hosting all future events only on week days”.

Here’s a summary of the 6 apps that came out of the Hack for Health hackathon we received from Muzinda-Umuzi:

Healthy Me by Washington “Washie” Mkombodzi

In short, this application assists you in losing or gaining weight by helping you choose the best diet to take. What really impressed us with this app was the fact that the developer is actually going to eat his own dog food and use the app to gain 10 more kgs. If you were there at pitch day, you would have laughed with us at how the developer could not pronounce the word nutritionist.

Nyamukuta by AppDev

At first we thought the AppDev team was working on an app which tells you whether your girlfriend is on her period or not (and it does that very well) but on the Pitch day, we found out that it does way more than that. Nyamukuta App is a wide-scale application that focuses on improving maternal health during and after pregnancy, easily integrate expanded immunisation & child nutrition programmes. It monitors childhood development stages and manages illness for registered children under five years. You know that card mothers have to take to the clinic every week to record your weight and all? These guys have replaced it with an app.

Godobori Patient Record Management System by Timothy Shava

Godobori is a web based application designed to assist palliative care(Aids , Cancer, Tuberculosis, diabetes) providers in record keeping, data management, and reporting. It is tailored to programs in low-resource settings. Godobori platform offers a user-friendly interface that allows health workers to accurately and efficiently input appoint records. The program allows for individual patient tracking and aggregate data management. Moreover, it generates customizable, comprehensive reports on the essential health services given by palliative care providers. The system will notify due & future appointments to patients via email and SMS.

Tambira Utano by Tambira Information Lab

Tambira Utano is a mobile experience that is comprehensive, engaging, simple to use and fits target audience lifestyles. The app will provide patients with a natural system for managing disease on a day-to-day basis with reminders, notifications and coaching to keep patients confident, healthy and on track with medical plans.

My Health by Bit

It’s currently very difficult to keep track of your medical history. More often than not, people don’t even keep a record of what they have been treated for or the medication they were given. This is the problem this team decided to tackle. This app allows you to record you and your family’s medical history, medical service providers such as pharmacies and medical aid societies. It’s features include the ability to record which doctor you visited, why you visited them, the diagnosis and prescriptions they gave you and the date you went there. In addition it captures your Family’s Medical History and the details of Health Service Providers – Emergency numbers, Personal Doctors Details, Medical Aid Society. Their demo is on http://bitmyhosting.com/demo/healthhack/index.php.

Chiremba by Team Logic

This cloud-based app is a search engine for health-related issues. What makes this app so cool is that you ask your questions in your native language (they currently only support Shona, Ndebele and English) on any condition you have by describing the symptoms you feel and the app will attempt to give you a diagnosis. These diagnosis would have been crowd sourced from a community of doctors that contribute to the systems answer pool by receiving the peoples questions and diagnosing them and giving a credible doctors response. The system informs individuals who would have asked questions what they may be suffering from and informs them of the nearest health facility and helps them book an appointment to seek treatment as soon as possible. What we liked the most about this app is it’s anonymous nature and the fact that other doctors can view and review the answers submitted by other doctors. We also noticed from their demo that they used gamification features to encourage doctors to participate by rewarding them for participating. Cool huh?

The winning apps (in order) were:

  1. Nyamukuta
  2. Chiremba
  3. Tambira Utano

So far, Nyamukuta are the only ones who have announced a launch date and you can get more details about that on http://www.nyamukuta.com/

5 comments

  1. obert

    It obviously wasn’t well advertised. I’d have been there in a shot!

    1. Tawanda Kembo

      Hi @obert:disqus , I was one of the orgnisers of this event. Thanks for the feedback. Please feel free to email any suggestions on how we can market it better next time to tawanda [at] muzindaumuzihub [dot] com

  2. Tawanda Kembo

    I have one more addition. Oh, I’m the Technical Coordinator at Muzinda Umuzi Hub BTW.

    The reason we’re seriously considering holding our hackathons on weekdays alone is that although, quantitatively the turnout wasn’t very huge, qualitatively, it was enormous. We got a large number of participants who seem more determined and more likely to pursue their apps full time and this shows in the apps that came out.

    I have personally been to every hackathon that was held in Harare (and I have noted with concern how many good ideas never find their way to market. We have even hosted one ourselves and we have witnessed this first hand and seen how some people will only participate for the prizes.

    One question we keep asking ourselves is how we can improve on that and get better results the next time. And one way of doing this is to shift our focus from getting hype and number to getting those solutions to market. And I think we’re getting there

    1. #HackForHealth

      True that. One concern that was raised by another presenter was that most developers are only seen at such events, maybe they would want those prizes. You will notice that after these events there will go dark. I my opinion its time for developers to collaborate and tackle some of the problems the country is currently facing. IN one interview with CNN Dr. Strive Masiyiwa said money is just a consequence of our passion.

      My point here is to encourage all developers out there to participate fully in hackerthons and not just of money. 🙂

  3. ndiWasu

    Mr @tkembo:disqus, and #TeamMuzindaUmuziHub – even though I am shocked by your apparent dismal of valid developer’s concerns to have these hackathons held during the weekend, I have to admit, this is your child, and you can host it whenever it suits your interest. But I am urging all other developers out there to come together so we can organize something that is also convenient to developers with tight week schedules.

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