Fast-tracking new solutions at the openIMIS Hackathon

In February 2026, more than 25 software developers, private IT solution providers and representatives of government agencies from 10 countries gathered in Berlin for a four-day openIMIS hackathon. The participants discussed new opportunities and business models for deploying openIMIS to facilitate the delivery of health and social protection. They also programmed new functionalities which, once polished and integrated into the global version of the software, will enhance openIMIS’s current offerings and improve the efficiency, speed and accuracy of processes managed using the Digital Public Good.

The hackathon offered a chance for newcomers to the openIMIS community, from countries such as Cambodia and Pakistan, to work alongside experienced members who have used and contributed to openIMIS for many years. Several private companies also joined to explore business opportunities linked to openIMIS, which currently administers health and social benefits to more than 37 million people in 14 countries.

Onboarding newcomers to openIMIS

Moderated by Dragos Dobre, of Swiss TPH, the hackathon was one part tutorial and one part co-creation workshop. The mood was relaxed and collaborative: those with more experience generously onboarded those with less, and new ideas and techniques, such as coding with agentic AI, were actively welcomed as contributions from the private sector. 

On the first day, advisors with the openIMIS Initiative’s Coordination Desk introduced the software, its origins, its evolution and its current functionalities. ‘Our aim is to join forces to develop solutions that answer needs in our countries,’ said Saurav Bhattarai, in his welcoming remarks. ‘The community around openIMIS is one of our biggest assets, and now that you’re in the room, you’re also part of it.’    

Developers who already work with openIMIS shared highlights from their journeys and, in doing so, illustrated the impact the software is having in their countries.

Sunil Parajuli, from TinkerTech in Nepal, showed how Nepal’s Social Security Fund and Health Insurance Fund has used openIMIS to create a highly transparent and efficient digital claim processing system that handles 80,000 submissions per day. Maxime Ngoe, from Y-Note in Cameroon, explained how openIMIS has become the cornerstone of an interoperable digital architecture linking five different health programs.

Mohammad Hassanuzzaman, from SkyDigital in Bangladesh, shared how his company, which began working with openIMIS just ten months ago, has built up a system which manages employee benefits for four million garment and textile workers, using four openIMIS modules as a starting point.   

Three groups, three ideas, three successful demos

On the second day, Patrick Delcroix of Swiss TPH led a half-day deep dive into technical aspects of openIMIS, covering the software’s technical stack, its distribution architecture, and its current modules and packages. This was especially important for those new to the software, and laid the groundwork for the ‘classic’ hackathon activity which followed. Participants split into small groups and spent the final two days working on the ideas which had received the most votes in an online poll which began the previous morning. 

The first group developed ‘liveness detection’ functionality for openIMIS. Proof-of-life verification is important for preventing fraud in the claiming of social benefits. Facial recognition technology embedded in openIMIS could help programs validate legitimate applicants and beneficiaries and weed out fraudulent cases. 

The second team built a prototype which supports automated workflow configuration using drag-and-drop technology. With this feature, users would have more flexibility to collect different types of data and could modify data collection fields directly through the openIMIS interface. 

The third group built a prototype which extracts structured data from scanned images using optical character recognition (OCR). While claims review and processing is the most obvious use case, OCR can also be applied to any kind of document for data extraction.  

Rather than coding everything manually from scratch, all three groups were assisted by agentic AI to code and then fine-tuned the results. This allowed them to develop significant functionality in a short time. They integrated their new ideas directly into the openIMIS user interface and presented them to the full group on the final afternoon.  

Uwe Wahser, who coordinates the Developers Committee on behalf of the openIMIS Initiative, was impressed. ‘At the end of most hackathons, people present concepts or things that don’t work. You’ve created things that a lot of openIMIS implementations can really use,’ he said. ‘Now the challenge is integrating these features for roll-out in the global openIMIS product.’ 

Companies eye business opportunities linked to openIMIS

In a sign of openIMIS’s stature among Digital Public Goods, the hackathon attracted representatives of private sector companies interested to explore innovative business opportunities within the openIMIS ecosystem. As more countries adopt openIMIS, companies can generate revenue, e.g. by providing openIMIS as a service (SaaS), by helping governments to customize openIMIS to their specific needs, by building new modules which are interoperable with openIMIS, or by building on top of it.  

Ashish Joshi, of Global Convergence Solutions in Singapore, had heard of openIMIS but didn’t have a clear sense of its power. ‘I came to see what this product can do and how it could be placed in markets,’ he said. In addition to his work as a provider of IT systems, he advises governments on digital transformation in social protection. ‘Many countries are looking for solutions. With more advocacy and strong market presence of companies that know how to work with openIMIS, the software could scale further.’ 

‘I came to this hackathon with limited exposure to the social protection space,’ said Abe Karar of AugentisAI, a Jordan-headquartered company specializing in agentic AI solutions. ‘Now I have a much clearer understanding and can see business opportunities I would not have identified before.’ National health insurance programs and private insurance companies, for example, might be interested in AI-powered modules for claims review, document management, or reporting.    

The openIMIS Initiative nurtures the market for private sector involvement 

For openIMIS to continue to grow as a sustainable solution for health and social protection, it needs an ever-expanding network of developers and IT systems specialists who can provide the necessary customization and ongoing support to clients.  

The Coordination Desk for the openIMIS Initiative, hosted by GIZ in Bonn, actively cultivates the market for private companies to work with openIMIS. It issues tenders for companies to work with openIMIS in areas such as training, quality assurance, bug fixing, and the integration of new functionalities. The Coordination Desk ensures an open and co-creative communication culture among the teams through regular and open community calls and platforms. It also organizes online and in-person events, such as the hackathon, community meetings and webinars, which interested companies are welcome to attend.  

The Initiative also leverages opportunities to strengthen markets through its network of partner institutions. In Bangladesh, for example, openIMIS collaborated with a GIZ-implemented social protection project to train local companies in the software. Less than a year later, SkyDigital, one of the participating companies, is already piloting an employee benefit management system which will bring more social security-related features to openIMIS. 

Another focus of this outreach involves engaging with organizations whose solutions complement those of openIMIS. Cúram by Merative provides a platform used by governments worldwide to administer social benefits and manage complex human services programs. ‘There is a clear trend towards greater coordination of health and social services. Data and technology can help to realise this,’ said Héctor Upegui, Chief Health Officer for Cúram. ‘Cúram and openMIS each bring strengths the other can benefit from. The question is: how can we collaborate more effectively, and where can we jointly improve the support we deliver to the communities we serve?’  

Cooperation between openIMIS and Cúram could potentially facilitate openIMIS’s entry into new countries and open up use cases which have thus far not been explored. Interoperability standards for social protection developed by the Digital Convergence Initiative, which enable multiple systems to work together and exchange data seamlessly, could smooth the way for such collaboration. 

openIMIS is only as strong as its core

The number of beneficiaries supported by openIMIS-managed programs continues to grow, and there are exciting new implementations in the pipeline. The emergence of new solutions, such as disaster relief management and climate risk insurance, reflects how openIMIS continues evolving to address critical needs.  

For these gains to be preserved and built upon, the openIMIS Initiative must continue to have a stable core. The financial and political support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Swiss Development Agency (SDC) and the European Union has played a crucial role in achievements to date. It has enabled critical functions such as the stewardship of the openIMIS product, including maintenance and updates; the development of new functionalities which respond to needs identified by the community; advocacy with governments and international organizations to grow the number of implementations; and engagement alongside other Digital Public Goods in discussions about Digital Public Infrastructure and digital sovereignty.  

Thanks to support from the current funders, the openIMIS Initiative has become a platform which offers easy, practical ways for institutions to join forces. Many openIMIS implementations are financed by partners such as the World Bank and the International Labour Organization and by governments, including Belgium and France. These implementations generate new functionalities which can increase impact in partner countries if they continue to be integrated into the global version of openIMIS.  

See you in Kathmandu!

In an increasingly virtual world, there remains no substitute for the positive energy and connection made possible by face-to-face meetings. As Mohammad Hasanuzzaman from SkyDigital put it on the final afternoon: ‘After this hackathon we have real confidence in the people who are behind openIMIS. We see that we can contribute – and you see that you can have confidence in us, too. We can move further together.’

The next opportunity to meet is just around the corner: openIMIS will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with a Community Meeting in Kathmandu in June 2026. Mark your calendars! 

Karen Birdsall 
March 2026