Now that months of living with the coronavirus pandemic have passed, media and authorities report that hospitals are now adequately supplied with protective materials. Nevertheless, many people do not have the financial means to acquire the now available protective gear. Consequently, there are numerous hands and faces that still urgently need equipment to protect themselves.
Help that arrives
“RemedyMatch” RemedyMatch is a non-profit open-source logistics platform that matches supply and demand for critical items in crisis situations. The original idea and project originates from the “#WirVsVirus” hackathon, a cooperation by civil society and the German government, in March of 2020 as a social startup and is operated by an interdisciplinary team of over 70 volunteers.
#WirVsVirus hackathon pitch video
The platform was called upon at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic aiming to bring together inventory and demand for medical protective and emergency relief items quickly and easily. It was thereby helping to bridge supply bottlenecks during the pandemic and beyond. However, as the crisis slows down, large health organisations are discovering the open-source platform as a strong modular solution pushing their digital setup and degree of digitisation to the next level.
After the crisis is before the crisis
While “RemedyMatch” offers a robust and reliable tech stack for their everyday internal logistics and process management, it is ready to be opened to external stakeholders immediately at the rise of a new crisis, thus seamlessly enabling distribution of required material. Therefore, according to the project, “RemedyMatch” makes healthcare institution crisis ready. Their Head Of Marketing Matthias Diener declares,
“After the crisis is before the crisis – With RemedyMatch, we support organisations in dealing with future crises and other extreme situations.”
After participating and its foundation in the “#WirVsVirus” hackathon, the project is now part of the “#WirVsVirus Solution Enabler” programme, initiated by the social acceleration platform “ProjectTogether“. With the Vodafone Institute as one of its funding partners, the programme aims to implement the most promising solutions and digital prototypes as quickly as possible.
The “RemedyMatch” platform has further been selected as one of ten projects from the “#WirVsVirus Solution Enabler” to receive accelerated support in the “#WirVsVirus Solution Builder” since May 15, 2020. In addition to supporting the scaling, this unique programme aims to develop a sustainable business model for the platform.
About the “#WirVsVirus Solution Enabler” programme
The “#WirVsVirus Solution Enabler” is a six-months implementation programme for 130 selected innovative solutions developed for coronavirus-related challenges. The programme that is supported by the Vodafone Institute with startup funding, know-how and digital expertise, encourages projects from 12 action fields, such as health, everyday life and crisis management, to successfully implement their solutions on a broad scale. The Institute supports the project teams with individually tailored support by providing access to the Vodafone corporate network. Particularly the startup programme Vodafone UPLIFT with their PACESETTER offering supports the teams in the areas of IT infrastructure, public cloud, IoT solutions and individual consulting. The programme under the patronage of the Federal Chancellery has started working with the projects on April 8 of 2020. Find further information here.