PODD Named Finalist in The Trinity Challenge To Prevent Future Pandemics
On June 1, 2021 an independent panel of expert judges from global health, business, and academia, confirmed Opendream’s solution PODD: Participatory One Health Disease Detection as a finalist in The Trinity Challenge.
16 finalists were selected out of 340 applicants from 61 countries with solutions that leverage data and analytics in novel ways to identify, respond, and recover from future pandemics. The winners will be announced at a live streamed Awards Ceremony on June 25th 2021, with awards from a £6 million prize fund.
With governments and health leaders across the world focused on responding to the current crisis, many are also looking to strengthen public health systems to do better against COVID-19 and future pandemics. The Trinity Challenge coalition of 42 member organisations (including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, University of Cambridge, Tencent, Microsoft, and others) took practical action early last year, to speed up the development and deployment of data and analytics solutions for pandemic preparedness.
“We are honored to be nominated by the expert judges for The Trinity Challenge. With the Trinity Member’s support, we hope to grow PODD to more countries and bring affordable disease surveillance to the world. The more countries with PODD, the fewer places the next pandemic can start.” said Patipat Susumpow Co-founder of Opendream.
PODD is a participatory disease surveillance platform that empowers communities to prevent zoonotic spillovers. We combat the spread of zoonotic infectious diseases before they spread to humans and become pandemics.
An estimated 75% of infectious diseases—such as SARS, MERS, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, and HIV—are zoonotic in origin, meaning they “spillover” from animals to humans.
Zoonosis is a major barrier to poverty alleviation around the world, particularly in less developed countries that lack disease surveillance infrastructure and depend on animals for daily life. As our cities grow, expanding farmland and deforestation encroach on wild animal habitats, increasing the likelihood of spillover. According to most infectious disease experts, it’s not a matter of if—but when the next pandemic will happen.
With PODD, and the Trinity Members’s support, we can stop the next pandemic before it happens.
https://www.thetrinitychallenge.org/awards/finalists
https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/news/the-trinity-challenge-announces-16-finalists-from-around-the-world