Call for applications for products and services under HealthTech, EduTech, FinTech, EcoTech, and NutriTech categories. Deadline 29 February 2020

The Commonwealth Digital Health Awards (CWDHA) is a flagship project of the Digital Health Initiative of the Commonwealth Medical Association. The CWDHA were first held in October 2016 alongside the 24th Triennial Conference of the Commonwealth Medical Association in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The 2nd and 3rd editions of the CWDHA were held in October 2017 and in October 2018. The award partners in 2016 and 2017 were Microsoft® and Google® respectively. In all three editions of the awards the judging process was managed by KPMG®

The Awards in 2018 were the most successful so far. This was because of the high profile the awards received after the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health (CWCDH), which was launched during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London in April 2018, took over its management and the BMJ® group coming on board as the awards partners and giving global visibility to the call for Awards through all their online journal platforms. As a result, in 2018 there were 80 submissions from 23 countries with 10 winners. The judging process and the awards ceremonies from 2016 to 2018 were conducted in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

In 2019 the CWCDH decided to move the CWDHA to Geneva and to conduct it alongside the Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting (CHMM) and the World Health Assembly (WHO) to give more visibility to award winners starting in May 2020 on the theme ‘Towards Connected Health’. The landmark event will create excellent awareness among key decision makers, including the Health Ministers of the 53 Commonwealth Countries, about ‘Connected Health’ frugal innovations – low cost, highly effective solutions that deserve to be developed, or are ready to be scaled quickly in one or more countries.

The 4th CWDHA is organized by the Commonwealth Medical Association, the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health (CWCDH), the Commonwealth Digital Accelerator, and the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka. BMJ®, the Awards Partner, would promotes the CWDHA globally through their online journal platforms. The CWDHA judging process would be managed by KPMG®.

The CWDHA in its 4th iteration also expands its reach to tech companies and entrepreneurs beyond the Commonwealth, specifically to Europe and USA,  and its scope to include the concept of ‘connected health’.

Aims of the Commonwealth “Connected Health” Awards

The CWDHA is designed to build a valuable digital product pipeline to improve the health and wellbeing of billions, including but not limited to those with few resources. In our experience, many digital innovators with excellent solutions cannot take the next step and become entrepreneurs. They lack even minimal resources and expertise to build a successful startup.

We believe in sustainable entrepreneurship where business values and social values progress hand in hand. Towards this end, we are creating an ecosystem where commercial and mission-led development partners, governments, investors, researchers, and digital health experts compliment each others skills to rapidly and efficiently develop and scale solutions in some of highest need categories. The awards are the nucleus of this ecosystem.

The key objectives of the CWDHA are:

• To provide a platform for digital entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers from around the world to showcase their products and solutions.
• To support high potential digital innovations, achieve high impact in Commonwealth countries and in the developing contexts by means of recognition, investment mentorship and scaling.
• To create a marketplace for development partners, funding agencies, investors, governments and state institutions, and industry partners.
• To facilitate networking between digital innovators, investors, researchers and development partners thus enabling a ‘connected health ecosystem’.
• To promote sharing of digital technologies and ideas as global goods.

More information here; https://awards.cwcdh.org