Calling all aspiring healthcare innovators

Ayanda Swana, Siemens Healthineers

Just 40 participants will be selected to develop innovative solutions to some of the most urgent healthcare issues the country is experiencing, and attain a world-recognised certificate on completion of this innovative research programme.

“The economic survival of healthcare across the globe lies strongly in innovation. This is particularly true for Africa where we have challenges that limit access to quality cost-effective healthcare,” said Ayanda Swana, South Africa Zone country head, Siemens Healthineers.

The flagship ITT Certification Programme for South Africa has already run in more than 120 experiential learning programmes globally to develop creative pioneers capable of delivering innovative and customer-centric solutions to the biggest challenges in the healthcare industry.

“Regent’s iLeadLABs, with their 4IR technologies, are designing an innovation space specifically for the programme with the aim to preserve and support the prototyping and production of some of the participant innovations,” said Yusuf Vawda, iLeadLAB manager.

Immersive learning will take place in hybrid format (virtual and at the iLeadLABs), under the leadership of Professor Sultan Haider, the global head of Siemens Healthineers ITT, who has established and is leading 72 ITT locations at Siemens Healthineers and prestigious institutions.

“Successful South African applicants will be drawn from healthcare, IT, engineering and business and will work in muliti-disciplinary groups to develop innovative processes and products that will make a valuable impact on healthcare in the country. Programme participants will retain the intellectual property of their innovations,” said Dr Nivisha Parag, head of School for Healthcare Management at Regent.

When run in other countries, the participants in the ITT programme have managed to learn the ITT methodology to identify the challenges and come up with tangible outcomes that also have the potential of productisation.

The ITT Certification programme with be run for seven days over two weeks, from 5–13 September and will cover ITT methodology, identifying healthcare challenges and trends and developing solutions.