By : Shaima Hassan
The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), the executive IT arm of the Egyptian Ministry of CIT, is detailing its efforts with the tech community in Egypt to support the attempts to tackle the global Coronavirus outbreak.
The agency is mobilizing its available resources to accelerate research and innovation collaboration that could help in mitigating the impacts made by the global pandemic.
Through its ITAC initiative, ITIDA calls for researchers and tech companies to submit their product development proposals before 3 pm, April 30, 2020, waving with a fast-track financing process to any health-related IT-enabled Product Development Projects (PDPs) in the field of infectious diseases.
Hala El-Gohary, CEO of ITIDA, said that the agency is determined to support tech initiatives and hackathons to come up with supporting technological solutions and relevant innovations especially those with ready prototypes that help in relieving coronavirus outbreak impact.
El-Gohary pointed out that healthcare technologies, big data analytics, business continuity, and e-learning applications are among the agency’s priorities.
ITIDA is already supporting the tech innovation community through several programs and initiatives that run across the country. It has a dedicated tech innovation and entrepreneurship center that plays a pivotal role in developing the thriving startup scene in Egypt.
During the last few weeks, the agency gave a helping hand with the tech and startup community in the EMEA region supporting the ‘Wild Card’ online hackathon that called to build different components of a response system that helps people, businesses deal with the disruption.
It is also participating as a strategic partner in Pandemic TechHack, a virtual hackathon to adopt moonshot ideas that will help tackle the crisis or position Egypt well for the aftermath, with many international and local institutions, research agencies and startups.
Electronics Innovation Complexes that ITIDA runs in partnership with Sudo Techs, were also made accessible to support the endeavors to manufacturing face shields where 1,200 were manufactured and distributed to hospitals.
In the meantime, ITIDA with Dell Technologies co-launched a hackathon to stimulate students and startups’ innovation and support their innovations that counter the spread of the new Coronavirus using emerging technologies such as AI, blockchain, cloud computing, and data science and analytics.
