COVID-19 Innovative Response Tracker

The European Commission is calling for startups and SMEs with technologies and innovations that could help in treating, testing, monitoring or other aspects of the Coronavirus outbreak to apply urgently to the next round of funding from the European Innovation Council. With a budget of €164m, this call is “bottom up”, meaning there are no predefined thematic priorities and applicants with Coronavirus relevant innovations will be evaluated in the same way as other applicants. Nevertheless,…

The TechChill Foundation is hosting a fully virtual hackathon for the online environment. HackForce is taking place from March 17 to March 19! Hackathon aims to find solutions to the challenges posed by the coronavirus crisis by mobilizing volunteer resources at the community level. Organized by volunteers from the startup community, hackathon HackForce has gathered already 650 participants (and this number is increasing EVERY minute) from 18 countries. Hackers have formed 28 teams and are…

Profesor del sector oficial de la ciudad de Bogota diseño un sistema virtual de apoyo escolar para aprender en casa por el cierre de todos los colegios y escuelas de Colombia. El portal educativo www.micolegioenlanube.com contiene todos los recursos educativos que debe tener cualquier colegio desde aulas virtuales, videoteca, biblioteca digital, cursos en linea, juegos educativos, simulaciones, infografias y planes curriculares con guias educativas para todos los grados. Con esta innovación…

Open paywalled public procurement portals providing information about procurement requirements for COVID-19 to improve and accelerate the procurement of urgently needed items by freeing up the flow of information between buyers and suppliers globally.

An emergency event in a neighbouring authority highlighted how hard it was to identify vulnerable persons during a confirmed gas leak, Falkirk Council resolved to find a faster, more accurate and secure method for quickly identifying those in need during any type of emergency incident where local residents might be in danger. Data was cleansed and uploaded to an electronic mapping system which allows us to identify vulnerable persons in a few simple clicks and has been hailed as quantum leap.

Canadians have kicked off a ‘caremongering’ trend, using localised Facebook groups in which people can post #ISO posts (‘in search of’ help requests), or #offer posts, enabling people to acquire important medical or household goods that they may not have been able to find for health or mobility reasons.

Members of the UK Communication Workers Union (CWU) who are workers in the Royal Mail postal service, have voted to put themselves as an "additional emergency service". In an internal ballot, they voted for this measure due to their transferrable skills, with the possibility of them undertaking tasks including delivering medical aid, checking on the vulnerable, and supporting people working from home.

Singapore is employing contract trackers to work out exactly who coronavirus patients have and haven't come into contact with in the period leading up to their diagnosis. They research cases through interviews with the patient and examining of (digital) calendars and receipts, to piece together a picture of exactly who each patient has interacted with, where, and when, before reporting back to the Singaporean Ministry of Health.

In Estonia, the government policy development lab Accelerate Estonia has partnered with Garage48 to run a 6 hour 'hackathon' which collected 96 ideas, with over 860 people in the official slack. They now have 28 teams working together on projects as a result.

The EU is using a Call for Proposals to for SMEs to source innovative solutions from the private sector that can be scaled up to handle Corona Virus issues. This is a EUR164 million fund, designated as “Bottom Up”, meaning it has “no predefined thematic priorities”, thus allowing for coronavirus-relevant innovations to be submitted and fast-tracked.