The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), via its Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), has decided that the best way to ensure the nation can rapidly produce and distribute critical medical supplies during a public health emergency is to hold a prize competition. Because nothing says 'preparedness' like a little healthy competition.
NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) is lending its Tournament Lab contract capability to run this crowdsourced challenge, which seeks forward-thinking conceptual systems designs for resilient medical manufacturing, logistics, and digital coordination. The challenge unfolds in three phases.
Phase 1: Submit your brilliant idea. Up to 8 finalists will each receive a $5,000 prize and an invitation to a hybrid Pitch Event at ASPR headquarters in Washington, DC. From there, up to 3 winners will each snag a $150,000 prize and move to the innovation development phase.
Phase 2: Two developmental milestones will monitor solution development, with $75,000 additional prizes for each milestone completed - up to $150,000 in total milestone payments. Because apparently, solving supply chain issues requires a little incentive along the way.
Phase 3: At the end of the milestone period, up to 3 teams may be invited to a final Live Validation Event, where they’ll test their solutions under applicable real-world simulations and compete for a total prize purse up to $1,100,000.
For more details, visit the challenge page at expeditionhacks.com. Because if there’s one thing the pandemic taught us, it’s that we should have thought about this earlier.