The National Health Authority (NHA) will be hosting its first ever open-to-all hackathon series to drive ideation and innovations around the different building blocks in the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) ecosystem. The series will begin with a hackathon - ‘Round 1: Kickstarting Unified Health Interface (UHI)’ slated for 14th to 17th July 2022. The hackathon shall be focussed on the Unified Health Interface (UHI) and would aim at mobilising the health start-up ecosystem in India and bringing together individuals and organisations to develop solutions through UHI.

The hackathon will provide an excellent opportunity for innovators, data experts and developers from all over the world to collaborate and build innovative solutions for providing access to digital health services through UHI.

UHI is designed as an open network to enable the interoperable transaction of digital health services such as teleconsultation. Through UHI, patients can discover, book, conduct and pay for services offered by a variety of participating providers from any application of their choosing. This stands in contrast to the current mode of digital health service delivery, where patients and doctors must transact using a common application or platform.

Announcing the Hackathon Series, Dr. R.S. Sharma, CEO, NHA said “India has enabled creation of some of the most efficient public delivery systems in the world, as has been witnessed through JAM and UPI, by breaking silos and unlocking network effects. ABDM and UHI will enable the same for the healthcare ecosystem and this Hackathon Series will enable players to collaborate and build solutions which define the future of healthcare. All are invited to participate in creating a better health ecosystem for every Indian”

‘ABDM Hackathon Series - Round 1: Kickstarting UHI’ will focus on two major themes:

Innovation Track: Challenge for innovative solutions to power digital health in an open network around various use cases such as teleconsultation, ambulance booking, lab tests, physical consultation booking, lab tests booking.

Integration Track: Challenge to accelerate development of applications that are compatible with UHI and integrate these applications with the applications of other such participants to enable digital health transactions on the UHI network.

The tentative prize pool for ‘Round 1 – Kickstarting UHI’ isRs. 60,00,000*. This shall be awarded to the top performers on each challenge track on the above-mentioned themes. The solutions shall be assessed by an independent jury. Interested participants are requested to register here https://abdm.gov.in/register

*The prizes are tentative; the jury might decide to award fewer or more prizes.

Further, as part of the UHI hackathon, NHA shall be organising masterclasses to further the participants' understanding of the ABDM ecosystem.The details about upcoming masterclasses, challenge statements, prizes under each categoryand other updates shall be posted on ABDM website - https://abdm.gov.in and UHI portal - https://uhi.abdm.gov.in.

The first round of ABDM Hackathon Series will be followed by a Health Claims Exchange (HCX) Hackathon; the details will be shared on the ABDM and UHI website.

For further details on UHI, the full text of the UHI Consultation Paper, as well as the recording of the UHI Public Webinar may be referred to. They are available for download on the ABDM website at https://abdm.gov.in/publications