
New Delhi: Leif Johansson, Chairman of the Board, AstraZeneca Plc during his three day visit to India, announced a mile-stone expansion of the company’s strategic collaborations to address the rising burden of Non-Communicable Diseases(NCDs) in India.
The new partnerships with Indian and Swedish partners aspire to the ambitions of the India-Sweden Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future, as agreed upon last year by Indian Prime Minister Modi and Swedish Prime Minister Löfven. Taking advantage of the new opportunities created by the Digital India initiative, they aim to create new innovative solutions for patients with diseases such as asthma, diabetes and cancer in India and beyond.
At the India-Sweden Unnati healthcare 2.0 day, the company and its partners, Business Sweden, The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), Atal Innovation Mission-Niti Aayog and AGNIi, announced the finalists of the Unnati Healthcare Innovation Challenge. At the same time, AstraZeneca launched a strategic partnership with the NASSCOM IoT Centre of Excellence to set up an accelerator programme to support Indian start-ups develop new innovative solutions to NCD care in India and beyond.
Unnati is based on the spirit of India Sweden Joint Declaration on Innovation Partnership for Sustainable Future to create on-the-ground collaboration through user-case driven innovation challenges. The Unnati Healthcare Innovation Challenge, a first of its kind, was launched in November 2018 to accelerate innovative technologies that can provide affordable and accessible solutions for early screening and management of NCDs such as remote screening methods, point of care diagnostics and digital solutions that enable efficient data capture.
As part of this challenge, 90+ healthcare start-ups participated from all over India. The finalists were invited to present their ideas at the Unnati Healthcare 2.0 day. The selected winners among the finalists will be receiving mentorship support from AstraZeneca, which will contribute its unique healthcare domain expertise with the aim of helping the finalists bring their solutions to market.
