It’s been an unpredictable journey since the start of March 2020. The stock market has been facing the consequences with a probable recession in vicinity as the world is facing its first major pandemic. Nevertheless, many philosophers and deep thinkers have observed that every crisis cloudhas a silver lining. As we face a pandemic of unprecedented scale due to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus), our day-to-day lives are being affected in a radical way. “The Chinese used two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger and the other for opportunity.
‘In a crisis, be aware of the danger, but recognize the opportunity’ as quoted by John F. Kennedy. True to the above notion, crisis indeed leads to opportunities and innovations. It is evident that due to the disruptive world events, the coordination in work is severely impaired. We at InnovatioCuris(IC) are trying to empower businesses by aiding seamless interaction through a set of tools to coordinate, organize, and conduct workforce, activities, and events. With our efforts we are paving the path to rise together and reform ourselves in this dwindling situation.
At IC, we engaged ourselves with varied new things during the lockdown and hence we improvised our expertise in conducting virtual events seamlessly. Below are some of the events that we conducted where experts, innovators, stakeholders came under one platform to search for innovative ways to control the pandemic.
Fight Corona IDEAthon
When the world was facing the pandemic and lockdown, Estonia started with a 48 hr online hackathon on 15 March to respond to COVID-19, then a few days later Germany and Finland followed. 42000+ people participated in the German edition ending up crashing the Slack! (software used for the conducting the hackathon). We also responded to the crisis in a meaningful way by conducting an online hackathon in India, called IDEAthon! The event started at 6:00 P.M. on March 26, 2020 and concluded on March 29, 6:00 P.M. (The original plan was 48 hours but it stretched for 72 hrs because of the overwhelming response). The three themes of proposals which were solicited are based on:
Saving Lives, Saving Communities and Saving Businesses.
We started with the Ministry of Human Resources, Innovation Cell run under AICTE. Every year they organised the world’s largest hackathon. Along with them, we partnered with an incubator based out of Coimbatore, called FORGE. Then we onboarded various national and international agencies like iHub Gujarat, UN Technology Lab to World Startup in Netherlands. The stipulated time we had (four days to be precise) to do outreach, we had 5400+ teams and 350+ mentors applying for the IDEAthon.
Through a rigorous process, we could shortlist the top 20 out of the 5000+ applications. Seven entries in the student track, six entries in the educator track and seven in the startup track, each faced an international jury. Eighteen out of the twenty received a cash prize and were further eligible for various government grants for their solutions.
For further details, read: https://innovatiocuris.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IDEAthon-Casestudy-InnovatioCuris.pdf
MHRD – AICTE Mega online challenge “SAMADHAN”
Taking inspiration from the Fight Corona IDEAthon conducted in March 2020, a Mega Online Challenge “SAMADHAN” was launched by MHRD Innovation Cell and AICTE in collaboration with InnovatioCuris and Forge to test the ability of students, educators & individuals/startups to innovate for solutions to fight COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge commenced on April 8 and ended on April 26, 2020.
The challenge was segmented into 2 tracks:
Track1: Ideate,Simulate,Win
Track2: Validate, Pitch, Deploy
The purpose of this challenge was to Save Lives, Save Communities and Save Businesses. The challenge consisted of design, simulation and development of measures that can be made available to the government agencies, health services, hospitals and other services for immediate solutions pertaining to the pandemic and other such calamities.
Out of more than 3500+ ideas, nine ideas were awarded cash prizes and are now being considered for various government grants and incubation opportunities to further accelerate the solutions.
For further details, read: http://innovatiocuris.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SAMADHAN-case-study-Final.pdf
Icare webinar series
According to WHO’s report 2012, globally, 35.4% of people who are suffering from diabetes mellitus have diabetic retinopathy and 11.7% had sight-threatening disease. In 2017, 73% of the 451 million people with diabetes worldwide (16.2%) lives in India. Studies carried out in the country over the last decade reported that diabetic retinopathy prevalence were approximately 9.6% in rural areas and 18.0% (255/1414) in urban areas; the rates of sight-threatening retinopathy in the two areas were 3.8% (45/1190) and 6.6% (39/592), respectively.
Risk factors for diabetic retinopathy include longer duration of diabetes, poor diabetes control and hypertension. Evidence from high-income countries indicates that the risk of visual loss from diabetic retinopathy can be reduced by strategies such as better control of blood glucose, hypertension and regular screening to detect individuals with sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy, followed by confirmatory diagnosis and appropriate management.
IC has always spread awareness and forged ahead to bring valuable innovations into the Indian healthcare ecosystem, we helped a Finnish organisation icare, by conducting a series of webinars to spread awareness on the topics of diabetic retinopathy, which also resulted in sales enquiries for icare, Finland.
Feedback of the study showed that 91% of participants were satisfied with the webinar content. We received overwhelming response from participants wherein they mentioned they had an enriching experience and increased knowledge on diabetes retinopathy.
To view the webinar, visit: https://youtu.be/D5DG_la01eI & https://youtu.be/_rRpZL3okKg
Smart India Hackathon (SIH)
Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, the Smart India Hackathon 2020 was organized virtually for the first time in the history of SIH building on the expertise of InnovatioCuris, as IC had already conducted two large hackathons, Ideathon and Samadhan for COVID-19 solutions and had a deep understanding of the processes involved in a virtual event.
Under the guidance of Dr Mohit Gambhir, MHRD innovation cell, three different sets of teams remotely collaborated for the organization of SIH 2020 i.e. MHRD Innovation Cell team, i4C team and IC team. The IC team provided the technical expertise and the other two teams provided the managerial and domain expertise, this joint team was ‘the organizing team’.
SIH 2020 connected all the participants throughout the nation together over a specially-built advanced SIH platform. Nearly 10,000 members including the delegates, juries, students, nodal center committee and organizers were associated with SIH 2020 including 1080 teams and 705 mentors (6 participants per team, about 6480 participants) who competed for 36 hours across 40 different centers in India.
70 organizations participated in the Hackathon this year as Problem Statement Owners. Central ministries/ Departments such as Indian Space Research Organisation, Bureau of Police Research & Development, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Women and Child Development etc., along with State Ministries/Departments, such as Government of Sikkim, Government of Goa, Government of Bihar etc., and other private industries, such as the Amazon Web services, Yamaha motor Services etc. were the partners in the SIH 2020. Total of 243 problem statements, based on 11 themes were worked upon during this edition of SIH.
For further details, read: https://innovatiocuris.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SmartIndiaHackathon2020_case_study.pdf
Application of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (CCAAIH)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare is being employed in a myriad of settings including hospitals, clinical laboratories, and research facilities. Its approach towards employing technologies and machines to sense and comprehend data like humans has opened up previously unavailable or unrecognised opportunities for clinical practitioners and health service organisations. AI in medicine and healthcare refers to the use of technology / automated processes in the diagnosis and treatment of patients/ communities who require care. Whilst diagnosis and treatment may seem like simple steps, there are many other background processes that must be followed in step wise manner for quality patient care like: gathering of data through patient interviews and tests; processing and analysing results; using multiple sources of data to come to an accurate diagnosis; determining an appropriate treatment method; preparing and administering the chosen treatment method; patient monitoring and aftercare/ follow-up appointments and other healthcare settings etc.
Cognizant of the importance of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare sector, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) collaborated with InnovatioCuris (IC) for jointly developing a Certificate Course in Application of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (CCAAIH) with an objective to understand the basic concepts, applications, challenges and opportunities of AI in healthcare. The course received an overwhelming response and hence it was decided that there will be a second batch for the same as well. A total of fifty participants in each batch from all across the country underwent the training.
Feedback and evaluation are an integrated quality assurance tool to assess the impact and effectiveness of the course. A concurrent session feedback and evaluation were done on all the five days. The pre-test and post-test questionnaire were administered at the beginning and at the end of each module on all the five days and an exit exam of 20 marks with objective questions was conducted after the last session. The exit exam result had an average score of 73% which is well above the passing score (50% of total).
Feedback study shows that 90% of participants were satisfied with the course content. We received overwhelming testimonials from participants wherein they mentioned that they would recommend the course to their organizations.
For further details, visit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAo6BYZ_XW3Wi1dfhO53a9p8Amvq8V_L/view
Cyber Security Training for Doctors with PHFI
The healthcare industry is frequently struggling with data breaches and other cybersecurity incidents. That’s likely because cybercriminals know the value of medical data. The new wave of digitizing medical records has seen a paradigm shift in the healthcare industry. With increasing digitization in the healthcare industry, we have become more vulnerable to data and identity thefts. In these difficult times, attacks from malicious actors may even rise, which means healthcare cybersecurity must remain a priority in 2020.
Cognizant of the importance of cyber security in healthcare sector, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) collaborated with InnovatioCuris (IC) for developing a Certificate Course in Cybersecurity in healthcare (CCCH) with an objective to provide an understanding of healthcare with cyber security aspects and to help participants start security initiatives in their healthcare facility.
A total of forty-two participants from all across the country underwent the training from July 4-7, 2020. For this training, twenty-three participants from six state governments, two PSUs, three government bodies and one private diabetes association received nomination from Lions Club of India through Lions Coordination Committee of India Association (LCCIA) and nineteen participants were enrolled through self-nomination.
Feedback and evaluation are an integrated quality assurance tool to assess the impact and effectiveness of course. A concurrent session feedback and evaluation was done on all 4 days. The questionnaire was administered at the end of each module on all the 4 days along with an end session quiz and an exit exam of 40 marks with objective questions was conducted after the last session. The exit exam result had an average of 79% which is well above the passing score (50% of total); indicating a 100% pass percentage.
Feedback study showed that 97% of participants were satisfied with the course content and provided the speaker rating of 8 on a 10 point scale. We received overwhelming testimonials from participants wherein they mentioned that they would recommend the course to their organizations.
For further details, visit: https://innohealthmagazine.com/2020/cybersecurity/report-on-first-certificate-course-in-cyber-security-in-healthcare-ccch/
B2B Tool
When we think about an event, be it virtual or physical, the most important value addition that we take away back with us is the connections/ friends we make, people we meet. We at InnovatioCuris(IC) built a tool which can assist you in aligning and conducting your B2B meetings seamlessly to give the best and most out of your time and event.
B2meets.com is an event correspondent B2B matchmaking tool to meet peers and prospective business opportunities seamlessly and securely. The tool has been an integral part of three European projects from the time of its inception.
Some of the highlighting features of the tool being:
- For organisers
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- Host your own B2B meetings
- Schedule custom time slots
- Assign participant categories and subcategories for exhaustive and filtered matchmaking
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- For participants
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- Share your pitch on your profile
- Access your schedule through an interactive calendar
- Search participants from varied categories for domain specific connections
- Share contact and connection details privately
A demo video is available on this link: https://youtu.be/jV5L5kjcqfg
2nd TCGA (Virtual) Conference
The 1st TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas)-themed conference was organised in Pune in September 2019. Over 350 delegates consisting of onco-clinicians, basic researchers, bioinformaticians, geneticists, translational researchers, big-data scientists, bioethicists and regulatory experts attended the event.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, even though initially planned, it was not possible to organize a 2nd TCGA-themed conference in Pune in 2020. However, considering the strong interest and several requests from participants and stakeholders alike, the 2nd TCGA themed workshop and conference was organised virtually from December 3-5, 2020.
The conference was co-organised by Centre for Translational Cancer Research (Pune), Persistent Systems Ltd., and TCGA, NCI, NIH, USA where IC was the technology partner for end-to-end technical support. The event saw more than 1500 delegate registrations with over 900 workshop participants from 60 countries (and 476 cities). The conference was inaugurated by Honourable Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the current Union Minister of Science and Technology, Government of India.
For further details, read: 2nd TCGA (virtual) conference case study
With this, we bid adieu to the most surprising year (2020). As Boris Yeltsin once rightly said, it sure has been hard for everyone, but we cannot give in to the situation… we’ll have to draw lessons and explore opportunities from the current crisis and from now on, we’ll have to work on overcoming it. Keeping our heads down and working hard, we as IC are super charged and motivated to seek new opportunities, friendships and collaborations for the year 2021 and ahead.
We would be happy to hear from you your thoughts, feedback and ideas for collaboration, because we believe in Ideate, Innovate and Capacitate.
Share your feedback and suggestions with us by writing at info@innovatiocuris.com or call on 0120 427 4630.
Compiled by:
Parthvee Jain, Editor, InnoHEALTH Magazine
