The Why.
Promoting healthy lives and wellbeing at all ages is extremely vital for sustainable development. This requires a strong commitment but benefits outweigh the costs. Most countries, especially the undeveloped ones, have a lack of access to sufficient healthcare workers, medical facilities and essential medical supplies. An estimated 18 million more health workers are required especially in low and lower-middle income countries to attain universal health coverage by 2030. In the past 15 years the number of childhood deaths has reduced by half proving that the fight against almost any disease can be won. Remarkable progress can be made to save millions of lives by focusing on providing better sanitation and hygiene, efficient healthcare funding and improved access to doctors.
The Global Challenge Lab is a new virtual entrepreneurship programme launched with Imperial College London in partnership with Tsinghua University’s x-lab in Beijing focused on finding ways to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It is open to students from all over the world. This inaugural Global Challenge Lab brought together 11 universities across 6 continents. Futurize is responsible for designing and facilitating the annual initiative.
The Challenge.
The Global Challenge Lab incorporates a 10-day online programme of workshops, guest speakers and mentoring to help students from all disciplinary backgrounds to devise and develop innovative ideas while growing their international network and developing new skills. The challenge was split into four tracks:
Mental health & non-communicable diseases
Women and children’s health
Communicable diseases – tackling and improving awareness, early-diagnosis, prevention and treatment of communicable diseases, such as HIV and STDs.
Access to healthcare – how can accessibility and affordability of healthcare be increase globally through technology
The Impact.
950 students registered to take part in the programme, forming 58 teams. Each team had to include participants from multiple institutions and disciplines with the aim of developing a technology-driven product or service solution that contributes to advance UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 - Good Health and Wellbeing.
580 Participants. 58 Teams. 3 Winning Ideas.
The winning ideas.
1. Oba-Pa
The competition’s first prize of £6,000 went to a team from four universities – Imperial, the University of Sao Paulo, University of Ghana and University of Toronto. Part of the Women and Children’s Health track, they developed Oba-Pa to connect mothers in Sub-Saharan Africa with midwives, using existing cellular networks on analogue phones. By doing this, they aim to reduce maternal deaths and promote overall women’s health.
2. PheroTrap
Second place of £4,000 went to a team made up of students from Imperial, the University of Sao Paolo and University of Ghana and part of the Communicable Diseases track. They developed Pherotrap to control mosquitoes using pheromones, a natural mosquito attractor. The trap also incorporates artificial intelligence and automation to use weather data to predict mosquito behaviour and control the release of pheromones. Computer vision will count the number of insects trapped, and when they entered, generating data on mosquito presence in a certain area.
3. QuickMed
The programme’s third place prize of £3,000 was awarded to a team comprised of students from Imperial, LSE, Tsinghua University, the Singapore University of Technology and Design and Huawei Seeds for the Future. Their solution Quickmed, part of the Access to Healthcare track, aims to deliver medicine to rural areas. Their platform could allow village doctors to input patient records and submit delivery requests for medicine to nearby village riders.
About Huawei.
Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. Operating in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world, Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. www.huawei.com
About Nestle.
Nestlé was founded in 1866, headquartered in Vevey Switzerland. It is a world-renowned food and beverage company. Through more than 2,000 brands ranging from global icons, Nestlé is able to offer a wide portfolio of products, covering infant nutrition, water, coffee, pet food, professional solutions, dairy products, health science, frozen food, culinary and other areas. China is Nestlé’s second largest market in the world. www.nestle.com