The European Commission has launched a €5 million prize to find the best solution for setting up an early warning system for epidemics. It is one of six European Innovation Council (EIC) Horizon Prizes, which are part of the European Innovation Council pilot run under Horizon 2020, the EU's Research and Innovation Framework Programme.
Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, said: "Every year there are over one million reported deaths from vector-borne diseases globally. Their societal impact is significant, often causing disability, stigmatisation and exacerbating poverty. This EIC prize will be a launchpad for innovators to find solutions that help prevent future outbreaks and improve life quality."
The challenge is to develop a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective early-warning system prototype to forecast and monitor vector-borne diseases in order to contribute to the prevention of outbreaks, mitigating their impact on local, regional and global scales, and providing support to existing elimination efforts.
The system prototype should encompass innovative technological solutions integrating big data derived from different sources (e.g. space-borne, airborne, in-situ and citizen observations) in the Earth observation domain. It should including climate data, vector-related modelling, meteorology, and geo-located information related to vector-borne disease outbreaks and behaviour. These should be interoperable with public health data and other socio-economic data.
The prototype should be demonstrated at local level, taking into account any relevant societal factors in the chosen geographical area.
It should be compatible for use with data coming from existing multi-disciplinary networks comprising health, humanitarian aid and emergency management actors, in order to leverage data and information from these networks, as well as to showcase the operational potential and added value of the solution.
This prize is open to all legal entities (i.e. natural or legal persons, including international organisations) or groups of legal entities.
Deadline to submit applications: 1 September 2020
For further information, please consult: News Alert & EIC prize for Early Warning for Epidemics