India Invites Tech Startups to Strengthen Covid Vaccine Network
The challenge invites participation from startups and emerging technology specialists to augment and scale the CoWIN platform.
India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) along with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has announced the launch of “CoWIN”.
It is a Grand Challenge for strengthening the Covid Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) system, a digital platform to roll out and scale up the mechanism for Covid Vaccine Distribution System, nationally.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said “India‘s innovators have played a crucial role in our fight against Covid-19. I invite innovators and startups for grand challenge to strengthen CoWIN platform for roll out of Covid-19 vaccination program across India.”
It is launched on the MSH (MeitY Startup Hub) portal, a collaborative platform developed under the aegis of MeitY towards building meaningful synergies in the Indian tech startup space.
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The challenge invites participation from startups and emerging technology specialists to augment and scale the CoWIN platform. The MoHFW has identified seven focus areas of technology development to address the likely limitations associated with complete and effective vaccine distribution system (VDS) and its seamless administration across India.
The challenge kick starts with registration process on 23rd December 2020 and is open for participants to apply till 15th January 2021. The top 5 applicants will be provided the CoWIN APIs (Application Programming Interface) to prove the efficacy of their solutions for possible integration with the platform.
India‘s innovators have played a crucial role in our fight against COVID19.
I invite innovators and startups for grand challenge to strengthen CoWIN platform for roll out of COVID19 vaccination program across India. https://t.co/wyZTLXjT4R— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) December 23, 2020
According to a government communique, each shortlisted applicant at this stage stands a chance to win Rs. 2 lakh covering their logistical requirements. The solutions once integrated with the platform through open APIs will be assessed for robustness and scalability.
Also, top 2 contestants from the challenge will be rewarded with Rs. 40 lakh and 20 lakh respectively after successful migrations of the developed solutions on the cloud on which the CoWIN is hosted, apart from their integration with CoWIN.
