EDCTP Call for Proposals: Innovative digital health solutions for sub-Saharan Africa

The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) is calling for proposals on “Innovative digital health solutions for sub-Saharan Africa”.

This topic aims at supporting activities that contribute to one or several of the expected outcomes for this call. Proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are contributing to the following expected outcomes:

Development, improvement and/or scaling-up of digital innovative solutions supporting clinical research through smart, highly innovative digital health technologies or concepts to accelerate the development of preventive, therapeutic or diagnostic interventions addressing poverty-related diseases in sub-Saharan Africa;
Development, improvement and/or scale-up of new digital technologies in public health interventions that can serve as drivers for the strengthening of health systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The proposed digital solutions should allow notably but not exclusively the improvement of development, production and access to health countermeasures, data and research evidence for better health outcomes and for the development and implementation of informed health policies and/or improved clinical guidelines in sub-Saharan Africa;
Contribution to the implementation of national and/or overarching regional digital health strategies.

Scope:

Proposals are expected to:

Be anchored in the scope Global Health EDCTP3 and of national/regional digital health strategies;
Target demonstrated highest medical needs in Sub-Saharan Africa
Tackle justified context-specific needs;
Develop, improve or upscale solutions, with early-stage involvement of end users and health services implicated;
Propose solutions which demonstrate seemless integration interoperability with key existing national, regional or global systems;
Propose tools which are sustainable, accessible, open-source, evidence-based and which follow the standards of data protection and digital health global public goods;^[5][6]
Propose a sound sustainability/integration strategy and prevent further fragmentation of the digital health ecosystem through a multiplication of pilots. Proposals of new tools must justify the need for additional developments and the shortcomings of available solutions. Strong evidence is expected for the justification of proposed actions. Access to evidence for existing solutions must be demonstrated. Scoping studies/Evidence generation on the need for proposed solutions are encouraged in the initiation phase of projects.

Proposals could be related to one or more of the following areas:

Scaling-up of digital innovations that have already yielded proven results, and their transferring to other countries where they have not yet been adopted;
Digital systems used in the implementation of clinical research and patients management;
Integration of digital health resources and data systems in sub-Saharan African countries with limited capacity, defining best practices, open standards, and quality-assured building blocks such as data harmonisation.
Remote access to diagnostics capabilities and health professionals;
Optimisation and adaptation of bioinformatics pipeline for next-generation-sequencing data and omics analyses in relation to the infectious diseases in scope;
Systems biology applications to sustain health technology manufacturing, development, and optimisation;
Systematic architectures and warehouses, at both national and provincial level, for clinical and epidemiological data collection, respecting the FAIR guidelines (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable);
Adaptation of image-based analysis tools and software for diagnostics systems of diseases in scope.

Funding details:

EUR 5 M per project

EDCTP Call for Proposals: Innovative digital health solutions for sub-Saharan Africa

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