Healthon To Venture Into Northeast, Concludes Its First Rural Health Hackathon

The two-day event of Healthon 2018 focused on highlighting rural health and wellness solutions developed by startups has concluded with Medblocks, Medsamaan, and Arogyam Medisoft emerging as winners.

In the 24-hour hackathon, 10 startups brainstored to code, build and design the solution using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), open data, among others, read the statement.

The event was organised by incubator Indigram Labs Foundation (ILF), a technology business under the Department of Science and Technology (DST). ILF said that 55 ideas were received from over 240 students applications for the Healthon.

The winner of Healthon 2018,  Medblocks, started by a third-year student Sidharth Ramesh from Kasturba Medical College in Manipal has built a platform for storing medical records using a peer-to-peer technology.

Similarly, the runners-up, Medsamaan –a startup started by Romita Ghosh, Amita Das, Ritz Chatterjee –optimises the procurement and supply of medical devices and disposables. Arogyam Medisoft Solutions started by Partha Chakraborty and Oli Biswas has developed a remote health monitoring platform used for various health-related tests.

Indigram Labs has also announced to start an accelerator program starting August, aimed at leveraging agri entrepreneurship ecosystem. In a media statement, the incubator said, “Starting mid-August, we will launch Northeast Agri Accelerator program, which will go on for six months covering the 7-8 northeast states.”

Indigram Labs was founded in 2016, aimed at fostering creativity and innovation in agriculture, renewable energy and rural healthcare industry. Indigram, as a group, has been around for 18 years and has promoted, incubated multiple ventures in these years. It has set-up more than 1,800 agri-based ventures through its ACABC programme and is currently promoting 250 FPOs.

Founder of Indigram Labs, Sunil Khairnar, earlier told Inc42 “At Indigram, we follow rigorous identification and selection process, followed by proper mentoring and business capacity building. We ensure that our incubates get access to appropriate technologies and essential funding, thus creating a market-ready incubated venture.”

According to its website, the Labs aims at incubating 100 startups in next 10 years.