XPRIZE Responds to COVID-19 by Uniting a Global Alliance of Innovators to Find Unconventional Solutions to Pandemic Threats

XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, reveals the XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance, a global coalition that combines the power of collaboration, competition, shared innovation and radical thinking to accelerate solutions that can be applied to COVID-19 and future pandemics.

The XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance launched to address the immediate needs of the COVID-19 crisis by expanding visibility into solutions underway. This launch comes with an open call to arms to the world’s innovators, clinicians, researchers, data scientists, institutions, and experts to join the Alliance and share existing work and resources using covid19.xprize.org. This website will allow the global community to:

• Participate in the latest breakthroughs, research and solutions in development;
• Make asks of what they need and allow XPRIZE, the Alliance members and their vast network of supporters and partners to offer their resources to help enable and accelerate innovators to reach their goals faster.

In the immediate term, the Alliance will focus on areas such as accelerating solutions for remote care, provisioning personal protective equipment to the front lines, increasing access to testing, and improving food and medicine security for vulnerable populations, among others.

As part of this Alliance, researchers and scientists are invited to share and access data through the XPRIZE Data Collaborative, a unique platform for researchers and innovators to collaborate, share and learn from data in a broad spectrum of fields in their search for solutions. This trove of data aims to unlock new approaches to fighting pandemics and will serve as the backbone to the collective effort that will prepare us for additional pandemic spikes like COVID-19, or other viral threats.

As part of the XPRIZE Data Collaborative, our launch partner, Anthem, is taking the lead by providing vetted partners with access to one of the largest certified deidentified data set including years of longitudinal data for prior viral outbreaks (e.g., swine flu, avian flu, influenza).

XPRIZE will also host and launch a series of rapid data challenges in support of the Alliance’s initiatives, which may include developing an early warning system for future pandemics, predictive models for public health resource allocation, more efficient and affordable diagnostics, treatments and cures that can be rapidly reproduced, or others based on insights drawn from the collaborators.

Other notable global partners that have already agreed to join the Alliance include United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Ending Pandemics, Intel, Illumina, IEEE Standards Association, MIT Solve, C2 International, Cloudbreak Health, the Foundation Botnar, McGill University, Nvidia, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, PPE Coalition, and UCSD. XPRIZE is actively calling for more partners and members to join the Alliance.

“There are few times in recent history when one pandemic has affected so many people, but with all of us focused on one problem, it means impact and solutions will only be accelerated, and we’re excited to work with Anthem to amplify the potential of this platform in quickly enabling global talent to join the fight,” said XPRIZE CEO Anousheh Ansari. “At XPRIZE, we believe radical breakthroughs can come from anyone, anywhere, and our response to COVID-19 will help provide solutions when humanity’s most vulnerable need it most.”

“In this time of crisis, we see an opportunity to come together as a community via the powerful XPRIZE platform to address the most acute needs in the system today and to accelerate new solutions: from protecting our healthcare workers at the front lines and proactively taking care of the high risk populations to developing new approaches to diagnostics, therapy and vaccines,” said Rajeev Ronanki, Chief Digital Officer at Anthem.

“COVID-19 is not the first, nor the last pandemic humanity will face, and future pandemics could be far worse,” said XPRIZE Founder and Executive Chairman Peter H. Diamandis, MD. “For 25 years, XPRIZE has focused on solving global grand challenges, crowdsourcing solutions. The XPRIZE does this by inspiring innovators around the world to use exponential technologies to address problems in unbelievably short timeframes. The XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance will leverage data and human collaboration like never before to facilitate technological breakthroughs for the benefit of humankind.”

For more information, visit covid19.xprize.org.

Additional Quotes from XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance Partners:

“Technology can play a role in helping us to address the world’s largest challenges,” said Stacey Shulman, Chief Innovation Officer and VP, IOT Group, Intel. “Intel is partnering with XPRIZE to enable the larger community to find creative and impactful solutions for this global pandemic.”

“Never before have we had both the technology and collective will to develop a proactive global network for real time assessment and monitoring of infectious epidemics,” said Dr. Phil Febbo, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Illumina. “We are pleased to be participating and helping to ensure that laboratories using our sequencers worldwide can integrate into a global community committed to preventing pandemics.”

“In response to the ongoing threat of COVID-19, Solve is focused on finding and supporting innovative solutions that address global health preparedness, early detection, and rapid response,” said Alex Amouyel, Executive Director at MIT Solve. “Better data sharing and analysis is one area that is critical in the effort to slow and track the spread of COVID-19 and future disease outbreaks—and Solve is pleased to join the XPRIZE Global Pandemic Data Alliance in that endeavor.”

"We are finding solutions and new innovations guided by lived experience, empathy, and a love of humanity and coming from unexpected and underexplored sources—makers/tinkerers who are also frontline health workers, student inventors, data scientists driven by social purpose," said Vilas Dhar, Trustee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. "This Alliance creates a platform to engage those actors and many more in a shared quest to alleviate suffering and create a new paradigm for pandemic response."

XPRIZE

XPRIZE designs and operates multi-million-dollar, global competitions to accelerate the development of technological breakthroughs that benefit humanity. Active competitions include the $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE and the $5 Million IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, the $20 Million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, and the $10 Million Rainforest XPRIZE. For more information, visit xprize.org.

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Contact information

Katherine Schelbert
XPRIZE
katherine.schelbert@xprize.org

Caden Kinard
XPRIZE
caden.kinard@xprize.org
(949) 280-0182