Using Open Innovation to Help Save Children’s Lives
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is embarking on a series of open innovation initiatives to enhance its mission of improving the lives of children and their families.
It has launched the Innovate for Children website to work with others to develop innovative new solutions to the problems that millions of people face.
“The Innovate for Children website is premised on the idea that we can and must do more, “said Shanelle Hall, Director of UNICEF’s Supply Division in Copenhagen. It is one way UNICEF is reaching out to expert individuals, industry, and design and research institutions to get involved.”
Tackling Challenges
There are a number of challenges currently featured on the website that are inviting input from members of the public. For example, ideas are being sought for an integrative approach to the treatment of pneumonia and methods to help caregivers treat their children for diarrhea.
The hope is that people will be able to provide leads that UNICEF can pursue when attempting to tackle the issues in the future.
UNICEF has long believed that collaboration is a catalyst for innovation and the Innovate for Children website features details of some of its partnerships that are bearing fruit, and these include:
- A new design for water containers, now being field tested in Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Haiti and Sudan.
- In Zambia and Malawi, Project Mwana is saving lives of newborns by using mobile phones to communicate HIV test results more quickly to health workers which means treatment can start much sooner.
An OI Approach
With speed a critical factor UNICEF may find that an open innovation approach could help it to discover ideas that are cheaper to implement and come to fruition in faster time-frames.
Reader Comments
Hi, this method for collaboration probably works quite well. World health is such a big issue and I wonder if it is solvable?
Posted by David on September 14, 2012
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