Date: 15 May 2020

The Hackathon “Kuwait hacks the crisis” has included professionals from Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) registered in Kuwait. Within less than a month, two business solutions have been disgend to overcome two challenges posed by COVID-19. The award ceremony started with opening remarks by H.E. Maryam Al-Aqeel, the Minister of Economic Affairs, and Social Affairs and Labour, and Sarah Poole, the Director of Arab States Bureau, Headquarters in New York has attended.

This Hackathon was sponsored by the Rapid Response Fund provided by UNDP Headquarters in New York. A team of innovation enthusiasts from UNDP, the General Secretariat for the Supreme Council for Planning and Development (GSSCPD), Kuwait Fund for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), academia and the private sector were gathered together to work for long hours to generate ideas. The coaches have guided and inspired participating SME teams throughout the five-day process of this Hackathon, and they used the Design Thinking method to encourage them to innovate. They managed to do so during Ramadan and under full-curfew due to COVID-19. The whole process was virtual.

The challenges that the participants were working on it were

1) supply-chain vulnerabilities for food or non-food commodities 

2) overwhelmed health and wellbeing services

Partners expressed their support to winners to implement their ideas. The participating teams were working really hard to win the award of 5,000 KD for each stream.

Challenge 1:
Participating SMEs are requested to come up with innovative business ideas to overcome supply-chain vulnerabilities.
Winning Team: Tested & Tasted

Idea Summary: Thiqa is a platform that urges farmers to voluntarily test their products, foregoing multiple steps in the current chain by linking farmers and consumers. In this way, vegetables and fruits will not be wasted or thrown away unnecessarily.
Video Link

Challenge 2:
Participating SMEs are requested to come up with new innovative business ideas for health services & wellbeing
Winning Team: MAZ

Idea Summary: IBN-SINA Integrated Digital healthcare Records system interconnects three layers of the healthcare echo system: patients, healthcare providers, and health ministry authorities. This is to reduce transaction costs for patients’ and to optimize patients’ choices for service providers.
Video Link