IT infrastructure robust enough for epidemics and pandemics
Project summary
In 2020, the UK Government put £40million on the table and invited innovators to bid for grant funding to stand up new innovations to help with the country’s fight back against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mvine submitted a bid to UK Research and Innovation and won just under £50,000 in public money to fund the work to develop a technical solution in a ‘fast start’ approach.
The grant money was administrated by Innovate UK and the project was monitored by Innovate UK.
Problem
The project ran from June 1st to July 31st, 2020. In just two months Mvine defined the key problem and, working in partnership with iProov Limited, delivered a fully functional software solution according to the project plan of the funding award. A key constraint was to place no dependency on any existing NHS IT system or databases.
Out of the 850 projects which won funding, our project was the first to deliver.
Solution
What we created was a genuine world first; a platform which was able to improve public health and protect privacy. A platform able to reduce the burden on frontline staff and able to enhance the quality of life for its users, but have no adverse impact on their fundamental rights.
All our work was guided by social inclusion and Privacy by Design.
Impact
In 2021, Mvine submitted a second bid to UKRI and won a further £25,000 of public money under the Project 64901 Extension for Impact. The objective was to take the project further forwards. In January and February 2021, Mvine wrote to every Director of Public Health in England to offer a funded service evaluation. We also performed outreach activity to others, looking for referrals and introductions to organisations which wanted to run trails of the innovation for themselves.
Amongst those who collaborated with Mvine was Lancaster University’s Health Innovation Campus.
It was the exclusive in The Telegraph newspaper on 12 January which started a wave of press coverage this year.
We have invited commentary and shared our ideas with analysts and think tanks.
Ever since, Mvine has been busy working to arrange trials of the innovation in a variety of situations and sectors:
Mvine welcomes an open dialogue with any organisation interested in privacy, civil liberties and data ethics.
We realise there are huge challenges confronting the UK as it rolls out the roadmap out of Covid which Government has set out.
Our job is as technical innovators not clinical scientists, policy makers or political leaders. We have performed our job to the best of our ability and in accordance with all rules attached to the funding we gratefully received.
We believe our work delivered a production grade platform which could be used as part of the infrastructure in the country’s efforts for economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic, and which is built and ready for use in future such public health emergencies.
