Sandoz invites young entrepreneurs to enter Sandoz HACk, a global competition to help solve healthcare access challenges

• Despite significant advances made by modern medicine, universal access to healthcare is still arguably the single largest unmet medical need
   
• Sandoz "HACk" - Healthcare Access Challenge - is a competition seeking young people with innovative ideas to "reimagine" access to healthcare
   
• Sandoz HACk is partnering with OpenIDEO - a global community that drives collaboration, innovation and impact around the world's toughest problems

The digital press release with multimedia content can be accessed here:

Holzkirchen, September 28, 2016 - Sandoz, the Novartis generic and biosimilar pharmaceutical division,  today announces the launch of Sandoz HACk - Healthcare Access Challenge - a global competition to generate innovative ideas and solutions to help tackle some of the world's most pressing healthcare access problems. The competition is open for entries until November 30, 2016.

"As global healthcare costs continue to rise faster than economic growth, health access will not improve without a major collaborative effort to address the gap, driven by fresh thinking", said Richard Francis, Division Head and CEO of Sandoz. "We believe that the biggest changes often come from amazing, small ideas and with the launch of Sandoz HACk we want to identify, promote and nurture creative ideas from around the world to help reimagine access to healthcare."

Despite the significant advances made in modern medicine, more than two billion people worldwide cannot access the medicines they need and more than 400 million lack access to essential health services.[1] The combined efforts of stakeholders across both public and private sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry, not-for-profit organizations and governments have made significant advances in tackling healthcare access challenges worldwide. But these large scale systemic initiatives need to be supported by community-led change, driven by innovative small scale solutions that can make a big difference. This is why Sandoz is launching Sandoz HACk, inviting people to generate novel solutions to tackle key healthcare access challenges in local communities.

Mobile technology is radically altering how care is delivered and received worldwide and the influence of mobile in healthcare is likely to continue evolving in the future. In its inaugural year, Sandoz HACk encourages today's generation of entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to enter ideas that harness mobile health technologies - M-Health - to help solve relevant local healthcare access challenges.

Sandoz HACk is open for entries from 18-35 year olds around the world. Following a robust judging process, the six finalist entries will be published on OpenIDEO - a global community of leading organizations and individuals working together to design solutions to the world's biggest challenges. Entrants' ideas will be refined and evolved in partnership with this online community before being presented to a panel of judges. Three winners will be chosen and awarded seed funding and mentorship to help bring their ideas to life. 

Details of how to enter the competition and the terms and conditions can be found on the:

• Sandoz website - www.sandoz.com/makingaccesshappen
• Sandoz Facebook page - www.facebook.com/sandozglobal

Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook using #SandozHACk.

For further details about Sandoz HACk partner, OpenIDEO visit www.openideo.com.

About Sandoz

Sandoz is a global leader in generic and biosimilar pharmaceuticals. As a division of the Novartis Group, our purpose is to discover new ways to improve and extend people's lives. We contribute to society's ability to support growing healthcare needs by pioneering novel approaches to help people around the world access high-quality medicine. Our portfolio of approximately 1000 molecules, covering all major therapeutic areas, accounted for 2015 sales of USD 10.1 billion. In 2015, our products reached more than 500 million patients and we aspire to reach one billion. Sandoz is headquartered in Holzkirchen, in Germany's Greater Munich area.

Sandoz is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Sandoz_global at http://twitter.com/Sandoz_Global.

For further details visit www.sandoz.com/makingaccesshappen

References
[1] WHO: Health in 2015; Access to Medicine Index 2015

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