September 2020

IDEO COVID-19 Challenge: Health and Livelihoods in the Global South

Millions of people currently face an impossible choice: going to work and risk contracting COVID-19 or staying at home and risk income loss. Help improve the lives of low- and middle-income urban communities in the Global South by joining the #COVIDHealthLivelihoods Challenge, an innovation Challenge launched by La Victoria Lab and IDEO, to design scalable solutions to help families adapt and thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic. Select Top Ideas will be eligible for a share of $55,000 in funding in addition to pitching opportunities, entry into an accelerator program, and access to an IDEO U course. CII’s Lead Innovation Advisor Will Durbin serves on the Challenge Advisory Team, a small cohort of diverse experts tackling urgent response and innovation across geographies.

Launch of Reimagining Global Health through Artificial Intelligence: The Roadmap to AI Maturity

CII’s Senior Digital Health Advisor Adele Waugaman served as an expert advisor to the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development’s Digital Health Working Group on their newly-launched report Reimagining Global Health through Artificial Intelligence: The Roadmap to AI Maturity [PDF, 5.5MB]. The report identifies high-leverage opportunities for AI to support global health for low and middle-income settings and emphasizes the need to systematically integrate AI into healthcare infrastructures and identifies a supporting maturity model.

Surgical Tools with Nesta, Intuitive Foundation

CII’s Senior Innovation Advisor Rachel Wood will serve on the global panel of judges for the recently launched Global Surgical Training Challenge, a contest designed to find innovative ways to develop lower cost, validated, simulation-based surgical training. The Challenge is a collaboration among Nesta Challenges, MIT Solve and Intuitive Foundation and is open to clinicians, medical educators, technologists, engineers, artists, and other creatives. The Challenge will award a total of $5 million over the next two years to teams developing surgical training modules that can be used in low-resource settings to help teach surgical procedures and techniques. Winning modules will be selected in three phases and will become part of an online open-source platform accessible by surgical practitioners.

Global Impact Investing Network

CII’s Senior Innovative Finance Advisor Omer Imtiazuddin presented at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) Response, Recovery, and Resilience (R3) Coalition Co-investment Convening, an event designed to facilitate the acceleration of financing into investments addressing the negative effects of COVID-19. Investments showcased during these sessions are presented by participants motivated to attract additional financing to impactful opportunities.