The Information Technology Industry Development Agency
(ITIDA), the executive IT arm of the Egyptian Ministry of CIT, is detailing its efforts with the tech community in
Egypt to support the attempts to tackle the global Coronavirus outbreak.
The agency is mobilizing its available resources to accelerate research and innovation collaboration that could help
in mitigating the impacts made by the global pandemic.
Through its ITAC initiative, ITIDA calls for researchers and tech companies to submit their product development
proposals before 3 pm, April 30, 2020, waving with a fast-track financing process to any health-related IT-enabled
Product Development Projects (PDPs) in the field of infectious diseases.
Hala El-Gohary, CEO of ITIDA, said that the agency is determined to support tech initiatives and hackathons to come
up with supporting technological solutions and relevant innovations especially those with ready prototypes that help
in relieving coronavirus outbreak impact.
El-Gohary pointed out that healthcare technologies, big data analytics, business continuity, and e-learning
applications are among the agency’s priorities.
ITIDA is already supporting the tech innovation community through several programs and initiatives that run across
the country. It has a dedicated tech innovation and entrepreneurship center that plays a pivotal role in developing
the thriving startup scene in Egypt.
During the last few weeks, the agency gave a helping hand with the tech and startup community in the EMEA region
supporting the ‘Wild Card’ online hackathon that called to build different components of a response system that
helps people, businesses deal with the disruption.
It is also participating as a strategic partner in Pandemic TechHack, a virtual hackathon to adopt moonshot ideas
that will help tackle the crisis or position Egypt well for the aftermath, with many international and local
institutions, research agencies and startups.
Electronics Innovation Complexes that ITIDA runs in partnership with Sudo Techs, were also made accessible to
support the endeavors to manufacturing face shields where 1,200 were manufactured and distributed to hospitals.
In the meantime, ITIDA with Dell Technologies co-launched a hackathon to stimulate students and startups’ innovation
and support their innovations that counter the spread of the new Coronavirus using emerging technologies such as AI,
blockchain, cloud computing, and data science and analytics.
Source