Among the winners of #EUvsVirus Hackathon – a startup from Lithuania

On 24, 25 and 26 April the European Commission, led by the European Innovation Council and in close collaboration with the EU member states, hosted a pan-European hackathon to connect civil society, innovators, partners and investors across Europe in order to develop innovative solutions for coronavirus-related challenges. Over 20,900 people from across the EU and beyond took part, with 2,150 solutions submitted in areas including health and life, business continuity, remote working and education, social and political cohesion, digital finance and other challenges.

A total of 117 innovative solutions to tackle the coronavirus have been selected as winners of the  #EUvsVirus Hackathon. The top six challenge category winners are:

• Team Discovery (Hungary) for their highly scalable patient monitoring system that minimizes the need for physical contact between nurses and patients (Health and Life category)
• Linistry for safe retail (Hungary) for their remote queuing solution to ensure social distancing in retail industry (Business Continuity category)
• Aidbind (Bulgaria, Germany, Malta, Sweden, Switzerland) for their solution to the information gap between demand, supply and funding of medical products, procured via donations and charity. Social and political cohesion category)
• The Village – Where The World Is Your Classroom (Switzerland, Ukraine, United States, India) for their online village platform that you can share with friends, family, teachers and peers for experiential virtual learning (remote working and education category)
• Bankera Business Care (Lithuania) for their solution to provide SMEs with short-term financing to cover their liquidity needs during times of crisis (Digital finance category)
• Sewers4COVID (Greece, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom) for their sewer surveillance platform for early virus detection to help decision makers direct resources where they are most needed (‘Other’ category)

Mariya Gabriel, the EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth said: “The #EUvsVirus Hackathon brought together people in 141 countries and many different areas of expertise from across the EU and the world, united in their desire to offer their time, talent, and ideas to help find solutions to the coronavirus crisis. This was just the beginning. With the support of the European Innovation Council and all of the partners involved in the Hackathon, I look forward to the transformation of these fantastic ideas into reality for the betterment of all”

The solutions were selected by a jury and weighted according to impact potential (40%), technical complexity & novelty (20%), prototype completion (20%) and efficacy of business plan (20%). Winners and two runners up were also selected for each challenge, of which there are 37. Cash prizes will be offered by partners to winners of their choosing – a total of over €100,000 has been pledged by partners to date.In the next two weeks, the financing and resource needs of the winning teams to develop and scale their ideas, as well as the financing and resources that partners are willing to dedicate, will be collated. From 22 to 25 May, a Matchathon event will take place to match the needs with available resources. Winning solutions will be invited to join an EIC COVID Platform – to be launched at the end of May – to facilitate connections with end users, such as hospitals, and provide access to investors, foundations and other funding opportunities from across the EU.