COVID-19 Recovery Challenge
A joint initiative between top UK universities to develop a product or service that can help individuals, businesses, and/or industries recover from the pandemic.
The Why.
The COVID-19 pandemic has already left significant economic and social impacts on individuals, businesses, and industries; and its negative effects are only expected to worsen. These pressing issues call for immediate action.
The goal of this online weeklong hackathon was to bring together the brightest minds across top universities, in order to generate sustainable solutions to the challenges that will be faced post-lockdown. By giving the best teams the opportunity to turn their ideas into real life solutions, the hackathon aimed to bridge the gap between students, who have the time and energy to innovate, and businesses, who were currently struggling to think long-term as they are forced to worry about their survival.
This hackathon was an initiative discovered while the co-founders were in business school as a way to not only help their peers across the globe, but to also help their community foster cross-collaboration to stimulate innovation.
The Hackathon.
During the hackathon, participants across the globe attended design thinking workshops by Supreme Factory and Dalberg Design and pitching workshops by Amplify Me. To provide insight into the impact of COVID on various industries, 11 keynotes were hosted including ones from:
Terri Duhon- Board member & non-executive director at Morgan Stanley
Abdul Samad Rabiu- Founder & chairman of BUA Group, billionaire and philanthropist
Dr Mark Davies- Chief Medical Officer Europe of IBM
Inma Martinez- Digital pioneer, AI Scientist, tech author, and government advisor
In addition to the workshops and keynotes, participants received weeklong support from over 50 mentors with a range of expertise that helped shape their ideas. The top 4 ideas were selected based on a pool of 13 judges scoring the best ideas to win a prize fund of £2750 as well as exclusive mentoring and introductions to our supporting partners. All participants who submitted an idea also had opportunities for employment and internships with some of sponsors including with Morgan Stanley who hired a participant from this hackathon.
The Impact.
230 Participants. 43 Teams. 3 Winning Ideas.
The winning ideas.
1. CT-X
CT-X is a call to explore, expedite and empower research. COVID-19 has disrupted the healthcare system, causing delays in scientific advancement by halting clinical trials and treatment opportunities for patients worldwide. CT-X is tackling the problem of delayed research, during and after the pandemic, by offering a solution that will automate processes required for patient involvement in clinical trials. The solution we offer is a patient engagement platform, where information such as age, gender and health conditions match patients to the most suitable studies. The platform offers a simple matching and booking system that can save doctors, nurses and researchers countless hours on manually intensive administration work.
Prize: £1500
2. Medgate/Synapse
In April 2020, there is a 1000% surge of ventilators in the market. The problem is, pandemic will pass, but the medical equipment are here to stay. At Medgdate, the heart of our business goes to people, by making medical equipment accessible to more patients, we can save more than 3.6 million lives. What we are proposing is more than just a service, but a multi-stakeholder ecosystem where we will be matching the supply to demand and taking a fee in return. In addition, we will be utilising technology to offer equipment lifecycle management and predictive analytics services. By combining marketplace and digital twin data we can leverage advanced machine learning techniques to forecast demand or predict equipment durability.
Prize: £600
3. Grapevine
Worldwide, conferences have been cancelled due to coronavirus as there’s no suitable platform to hold meaningful discussions. 83 million event attendees have been forced to change their plans causing millions of dollars in losses for companies. People attend conferences is to network, collaborate and share ideas. The lack of commonality between peers in breakout rooms assigned by a host creates awkwardness. Grapevine enables conference attendees to hold valuable conversations and create long-lasting relationships, using your current primary and secondary network of friends and colleagues. The platform encourages 20-minute conversations with up to 6 people with at least one person that you already know and their connections.
Prize: £400