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Health diplomacy through health entrepreneurship: using hackathons to address Palestinian-Israeli health concerns
  1. Khalil B Ramadi1,2,
  2. Shriya Srinivasan1,2,
  3. Rifat Atun3
  1. 1Hacking Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  2. 2Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  3. 3Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Rifat Atun; ratun{at}hsph.harvard.edu

Abstract

The universally shared values of improving health and well-being of populations make health a suitable diplomacy tool that transcends populations. The role of entrepreneurship in improving health and contributing to sustainable development is increasingly used in conjunction with traditional health diplomacy. In this paper, we present healthcare entrepreneurship as an effective health diplomacy tool that can spur economic growth, improve healthcare and generate sustainable development in communities. Improvements in health require involvement of diverse stakeholders including healthcare and non-health professionals to generate and implement sustainable problem-focused solutions. We illustrate the utility of early-stage innovation events, such as hackathons, in sparking entrepreneurship, interdisciplinary collaboration, ideation and innovation around problems specific to a local community. Specifically, we describe a hackathon organised in Nazareth, Israel as a means to bridge multicultural communities to address common health issues across the population. We suggest that health entrepreneurship is an important component of health diplomacy, and a critical ingredient for improved health, economic growth and sustainable development.

  • health policy
  • health systems

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001548

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Seye Abimbola

    • Contributors The authors jointly conceived the paper. KR and SS collected the data. All authors contributed to the analysis and writing up of the paper. All authors approved the final manuscript. The corresponding authors had full access to the data and had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

    • Competing interests KR and SS were previous directors of the MIT Hacking Medicine Initiative and RA has contributed to MIT Hacking Medicine Initiative as a speaker.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement All data relevant to the study are included in the article.