A new platform for Africans to tackle health on the continent will focus on generating creative and innovative solutions that cut across disciplines and sectors. The launch of the University of Cape Town's Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Initiative (IHII), at a Summit on 29 & 30 January 2014, will see 250 international and local innovators, experts and influencers from business, health, government, sciences, engineering and other sectors discuss and debate what healthcare innovation means in, and for, an African context.

A joint initiative of the Graduate School of Business and the Faculty of Health Sciences, the aim of the IHII is to harness the unique and diverse potential of Africans as creative and competent innovators of their lives and future.

This comes at a time when health care in South Africa and Africa is facing a myriad of challenges in delivering care to those who need it most.

"The complexity of challenges faced in healthcare is calling for different paradigms of thinking and for the co-creation of new innovative solutions," says Prof Wim de Villiers, Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences. Now more than ever, he says, innovation is required to develop solutions that can improve the delivery of healthcare in Africa in an inclusive, effective and affordable manner. These solutions must transcend current challenges in the system to improve health outcomes for patients but also to change the routines, responsibility and values of our healthworkers responsible for delivering the care.

The Summit theme is "designing solutions, addressing needs", in celebration of the 2014 Cape Town World Design Capital. Participants will gain from the experiences of other innovators, acquire insight from the front lines of healthcare, become aware of specific health needs requiring innovation, learn from best-practice solutions and be equipped with an approach to designing new and creative ways to contribute to the transformation of health system.

The IHII will serve as a collaborative, cross-sectoral and trans-disciplinary platform and promote a needs-based, empathy-driven approach to healthcare innovation. Support for the initiative has been received from the National Department of Health and of Science and Technology, the South African Medical Research Council and the Technology Innovation Agency.

"Together with the initiative's partners, participants of the summit, and actors in the healthcare system, new innovative solutions for a healthier African future can be pioneered," says Prof Walter Baets, the Director of the UCT Graduate School of Business.

The Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Initiative will be based in the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business and in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital.

For any queries about the Initiative please contact Dr Lindi van Niekerk.

Registrations for the Inclusive Healthcare Innovation Summit are now open!

To register go to the website.

Contact: Dr Lindi van Niekerk, UCT Inclusive Health Innovation Lead
Email: lindi.vanniekerk@gsb.uct.ac.za
Tel: 072 236 2079