WISH Announces Innovation Showcases Winners for 2016 Conference
Winners to Present Projects at Upcoming Summit
The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) has selected the 20 winners of its Innovation Showcases competition who will take part in the upcoming WISH Summit, scheduled to be held in Doha from 29 – 30 November 2016.
The Innovation Showcases at WISH provides a platform for young entrepreneurs to exhibit their innovations in the presence of some of the world’s leading health experts and policy makers. The aspiring healthcare leaders, who are all under the age of 30, will be given a chance to demonstrate their projects, ranging from practical devices and business models, to design-based solutions to over 1,000 global experts at the upcoming event.
Artificial intelligence engines to 3D printing technologies are just some of the winners of this year’s WISH Innovation Showcases competition. Among the competitors, Muhammad Imran will be displaying a system called Artificial Intelligence for Digital Response (AIDR). In collaboration with UNICEF, the system filters and classifies social media messages related to emergencies, disasters, and humanitarian crises.
Imran states that the increased use of mobile technologies and the proliferation of social media sites generate a huge influx of big user-generated data. He said:
This online data is relevant and extremely useful for a number of purposes ranging from disaster response and management to opinion mining, and in helping those who ask life-saving questions related to issues such as disease. At Qatar Computing Research Institute, my team and I have developed novel computational techniques and technologies, which can help gain insightful and actionable information from online sources to enable rapid decision-making. We have developed AIDR, which combines human intelligence with machine learning techniques, to solve many real-world challenges during mass emergencies and health issues.’
Egbert Schillings, Chief Executive Officer of WISH, said:
The best innovation historically occurs at the intersection of big problems that need solutions, technologies that enable those solutions, and a sustainable business model. At WISH, we recognise that innovation in healthcare can take many forms, from meshing big data and design thinking to reducing infections to personalising medicine based on a patient’s genomic profile. What connects all of our Innovation Showcases though is that they create value for patients because of their potential to improve quality while reducing costs at the same time. Ultimately, that is the goal of all endeavours in this sector.’
WISH, a global initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), is a meeting point for thousands of high-level policymakers, academics, and professionals. It has also evolved into a key platform for the dissemination of healthcare innovation and best practices.
The WISH 2016 Summit will feature nine panel discussions, based on evidence-based research, that highlight and address some of the world’s most pressing healthcare challenges, including Accountable Care, Autism, Behavioural Insights, Cardiovascular Disease, Genomics in the Gulf Region and Islamic Ethics, Health Professional Education, Healthy Populations, Investing in Health, and Precision Medicine. Internationally-renowned experts will chair the discussions. For the first time, WISH will also report on its impact, locally and globally, on issues previously highlighted at the conference, such as diabetes and patient safety.
For further information about WISH, visit wish-qatar.org and Twitter @WISHQatar.
