Second time for Innovate4AMR competition!

2019-04-25

The competition Innovate4AMR invites student teams from around the world to design innovative solutions for antimicrobial stewardship in resource-limited healthcare settings.

Innovate4AMR invites students to come up with creative solutions that tackle how we might manage better the use of life-saving antibiotics in our hospitals, clinics and outpatient pharmacies, particularly in resource-limited settings.

The global online competition is for student teams across the world to design innovative strategies to improve antimicrobial stewardship in resource-limited healthcare settings. This with the objective of ensuring access and increasing equity. In particular, the competition asks participants to focus on social policies, structures, and other systems-level actions that affect antimicrobial stewardship, access and equity.

Innovate4AMR seeks to engage student teams to propose strategies to tackle the underuse, overuse and misuse of antibiotic. This use persist in healthcare settings from hospitals and clinics to outpatient pharmacies.

In addressing AMR, student teams working across disciplines have much to contribute in proposing how to redesign the healthcare system.

Anthony So, Head of ReAct North America says:

“We hope to engage and enlist the next generation of leaders in developing innovative approaches to ensure more effective stewardship of antibiotics. Those in healthcare have a particularly critical role to play — finding new solutions for a world free from the fear of untreatable infections.”

Three organizations working together with support from WHO

ReAct – Action on Antibiotic Resistance and the IDEA (Innovation+Design Enabling Access) Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are teaming up with the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA), representing 1.3 million students from 127 countries, to organize this global competition. The World Health Organization will support and co-fund the capacity-building workshop for the winning teams.

No prior experience in AMR needed to join

The competition’s website provides educational resources, so no prior experience in working on AMR is needed to participate in the competition. Teams have until September 16 to put forward impactful and sustainable solutions. Winning teams will present their final proposals to an expert panel at a capacity building workshop in Geneva during the World Antibiotic Awareness Week in November 2019.  There, experts will work with student teams to enable them to operationalize their projects.

Teodor Blidaru, IFMSA Liaison Officer to Student Organizations, notes:

“As future healthcare professionals, we acknowledge the huge threat and burden of Antimicrobial Resistance and we feel the need to take urgent action. Through Innovate4AMR, we aim to build a community of health students and empower them to tackle AMR in original, effective ways.”