Health Innovation Meetups - Mental Health

ABOUT

Wits Health Innovation (WHI) is proud to launch Health Innovation Meetups, in collaboration with our partner JoziHub. The purpose of the Meetup is to inspire creativity, innovative thinking and debate around public health issues – with a strong focus on innovation and technology and the role they play within the health sector.

We aim to encourage interactive sessions that will include problem solving around the chosen topics. We hope to attract attendees from all fields and walks of life, that are keen to engage, get involved and make a meaningful difference. Our ultimate vision for this series of events, is to build and contribute to a community of people inside and outside of the health sector that feel inspired to tackle issues, shift mindsets and make positive change.

Our very first meetup is focused on the role of innovation and technology in mental health care. We are excited to introduce Zanele Hlatshwayo (founder of #Rise18) and Prof. Vered Aharonson (associate professor at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering and founder of ACLP and NexSig) as our guest speakers for the event. Please find more detailed bios below.

Refreshments will be served. Please confirm your attendance by clicking on the tickets link and share with those who might be interested.

We look forward to inspiring you!

Zanele Hlatshwayo

Zanele holds three degrees including a Master's in Strategic Marketing from Wits Business School, where she completed her dissertation titled " How SMEs can implement brand positioning in growing and sustaining their businesses". She has held various media and marketing roles in numerous companies and is currently a video specialist at Google South Africa. She supports and advises brands on building media and marketing strategies for YouTube across South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. Zanele is an ultra-marathon runner and has completed some of South Africa's toughest marathons. In 2018, Zanele founded #Rise18 to raise funds and awareness on depression and suicide in honour of her father, who committed suicide in 2010. She ran 18 races between January and July and raised R200 000 for the South African Depression and Anxiety Group. Zanele continues to raise much needed awareness on mental illness and is currently building a mental health application as well as training for her first Iron Man to secure funds for the app.  

Prof. Vered Aharonson

Prof Aharonson is an associate professor at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand. She founded the ACLP- Afeka Center of Language Processing – in 2009, which became a major research, development and consulting center for the Israeli industry in the Speech Processing arena. Prof. Aharonson was a member of the Humaine (Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion) Network of Excellence in the EU's Sixth Framework Programme - which laid the foundations for European development of systems that can register, model and/or influence human emotional and emotion-related states. Prof. Aharonson is a founder and former CTO of NexSig – Neurological Examination Technologies Ltd., a cognitive test development company specializing in computerized psychological testing for the detection of cognitive decline. Prof. Aharonson holds an M.Sc. in Physics from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University. Dr. Aharonson's postdoctoral research was conducted at the Eaton Peabody Laboratory, Harvard University, Boston, USA.

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