Global
Competition
Entrepreneurship
Details
The World Health Organization (WHO), supported by the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology (UN-OICT), UNAIDS, the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF, challenge you to use your bright minds and entrepreneurial skills to address one of the of urgent health challenges for the next decade : Keeping young people safe. The range of possible health innovation solutions that may be submitted include:
- apps or games
- wearables, digital technologies, tools or platforms, products
- the creation or improvement of products, services, processes
- new approaches to collaboration or communication, or new ways of engaging young people and/or other stakeholders
- policy reform proposals
with a view to keeping young people safe across the world.
Health innovations are defined here as the creation or improvement of virtual, physical or digital products, services, processes, or systems to improve public health.
Think about the potential for innovations to flow across the world. Perhaps an innovation in a low-income country can have an impact in a high-income country. Learning has no boundaries.
What do I need to submit?
Your submission to this challenge may happen between 4 March 2020 at 10 am and 15 April 2020 at 11:59 PM (all times are New York, USA time), and must include:
- A one-page short description of your idea, solutions or tool (max 400 words)
- A video of yourself/yourselves explaining the solution (max 2 minutes)
- An online working solution or prototype of your tool (preferred), or a video of it in action (max 2 minutes).
- Source code of the solution (This refers to the computer programmes, data files, and other electronic files to make your tool or solution work. These files should be hosted in a publicly accessible repository on the Internet (e.g. GitHub, bitbucket or similar)). Only original, open source work is accepted; however, your solution may also make use of other existing open source libraries.
- (OPTIONAL) If your submission is a policy reform proposal, you may submit an additional document. However, the one-page short description (point 1 above) must contain all the key aspects of your proposal.
- Whatever your solution, it needs to be your original work.
Criteria
Individuals and groups of up to four (4) individuals are invited to respond to the challenge by submitting a proposed solution to the challenge. There are no age restrictions. Only one (1) submission is allowed per individual or group of individuals. Submissions must be made in your own personal capacity, and not as representative of an organization.
Submissions will be accepted globally, but priority will be given to submissions that demonstrate respect for gender diversity and involvement of young people exposed to, affected by or living with the issue/risk/disease/condition in the development of the respective solution.
Benefits
All submissions will be featured on the challenge webpage on the Unite Ideas platform.
The winners and their proposals will be mentioned on the WHO public website and invited to attend an award ceremony in June 2020. Given the evolving COVID-19 pandemic situation, this event will likely be a virtual event. Only if the public health situation so permits, will an in-person event be considered. In the case of an in-person event, flights and accommodation will be covered by WHO, in accordance with its rules and procedures, for up to three winners (one individual representative of each winning proposal).
Winners will be featured on the challenge webpage on the Unite Ideas platform.
About World Health Organization
The World Health Organization's mission: to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. Working through offices in more than 150 countries, WHO staff work side by side with governments and other partners to ensure the highest attainable level of health for all people.