The Oxford Foundry has announced four innovations have been selected as part of the OXFO COVID-19 Rapid Solutions Builder.
The Foundary was set-up in 2017 by University of Oxford Business School to support new generation ventures. Innovations as part of its programme to support the recovery phase of COVID-19, were selected across four streams, healthcare, education, social engagement and mobility, and operations and supply chains.
The four solutions will each receive a £10,000 grant and a two-month programme of support, including advice in legal, finance, tech, operations, sector specific support and access to vital talent and resources.
The four innovations selected:
Healthcare stream. My110: A saliva-test for COVID-19, which is easier and non-invasive compared with other means of testing. The team hope to unlock the potential for more widespread daily screening through a rapidly scalable, reliable, low-cost screening tool, which can be taken at home and combined with tracking software to ensure the accuracy of each test result. The team has a proof of concept and is working with leading industry partners.
Education stream. Devie: an AI-powered coaching app to support parents of babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers. The personalised platform helps parents actively to engage in their child’s development, address parenting challenges and improve well-being. Devie is currently being used by 550 parents and has had very positive feedback from its 100 user-group. The company targets the new generation of parents, who regularly use apps and technology for self-support.
Inclusive social engagement and mobility stream: Oblivious AI is building tools to enable AI to respect the security and privacy of sensitive data, transforming how data is processed by both governments and industry. Oblivious AI is currently working in different states in India to contact-trace COVID-19 in hundreds of thousands of citizens while maintaining their privacy. They are in talks with other international governments about COVID-19 contact-tracing and are working with industry partners including Amazon Web Services, Oracle and Strategic Blue.
Operations, Logistics and Supply chains stream. Crowdless: an app which shows the extent of crowds in supermarkets and shops, to help people avoid crowds and queues and be empowered to make decisions. Since launching on the App Store, the team has received thousands of sign-ups a day.
Ana Bakshi, director of the Foundry, commented “Universities are homes of innovation that provide critical sources of income, impact and job creation for government and the economy. With the onset of the pandemic, it was vital that we mobilised our networks and leveraged our community as quickly as possible, this included repurposing nearly 100% of the team’s time to the COVID-19 action plan.”
‘The ventures we support are having an impact in hospitals, care homes, schools and other sectors. Cutting-edge innovation will be at the forefront of economic and societal recovery and resilience, so we must build and invest in solutions that respond to the secondary and tertiary challenges of the pandemic as quickly and sustainably as possible.”
