Amazon Web Services stumps up $20m for COVID-19 project

Amazon Web Services has launched a coronavirus related Diagnostic Development Initiative, with participation from 35 global research institutions, startups and businesses.

This is a programme to support its customers who are working to bring improved, more accurate, diagnostics solutions to market faster and promote better collaboration across organisations that are working on similar problems.

As part of this, it is committing an initial investment of $20 million to accelerate diagnostic research, innovation, and development. Funding will be provided through a combination of AWS in-kind credits and technical support to assist customers’ research teams in harnessing the full potential of the cloud to tackle this challenge.

The programme will be open to accredited research institutions and private entities that are using AWS to support research-oriented workloads for the development of point-of-care diagnostics (testing that can be done at home or at a clinic with same-day results). The emphasis initially will be on COVID-19, but AWS will also consider other infectious disease diagnostic projects.

Steve Davis, member of the World Health Organisation's Digital Health Technical Advisory Group and a member of the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative’s technical advisory group, comments: “The world needs more and more private sector innovation to combat this pandemic.”

“Amazon’s commitments and participation are very welcome, particularly since the lack of significant next-generation diagnostic tools remains a large gap in most health systems. A platform to link research, digital capabilities, and new products to customers globally is an exciting venture.”

Further details here.