Two healthcare funding opportunities to tackle health inequalities
Blog by Dr Christopher Austin member of the Scottish AI Alliance Leadership Circle
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the significance of health disparities everywhere. In Scotland, the NHS and Public Health Scotland, continue to focus attention on health inequalities and acknowledge “the right of everyone to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.
As an NHS trained doctor, and member of the Scottish AI Alliance Leadership Circle, I’m delighted to help publicise two unique programmes by Amazon Web Services (AWS) designed to support healthcare organisations, researchers, and start-ups to accelerate the development of cloud-based solutions, that promote health equity by:
increasing access to health services
reducing disparities by addressing the social determinants of health
levering data to promote more equitable and inclusive systems of care
In September 2021, AWS launched the AWS Health Equity Initiative with a commitment of $40M over three years to support organizations who are leveraging the power of the cloud to advance health equity locally, nationally and globally. Applications are accepted for review three times a year with the next deadline on 30th June 2022. Building on this initiative, AWS recently launched a new cohort of the AWS Healthcare Accelerator, specifically designed to support the startup community tackling the challenge of health equity. Currently, global startups with existing US operations are eligible to apply. Both the Health Equity Initiative and the AWS Healthcare Accelerator are part of AWS for Health.
I encourage the Scottish healthcare and startup community, especially those working on relevant machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions, to consider applying to these programmes. Through initiatives like these, I’m confident homegrown innovators can become exemplars in developing and scaling ethical technologies that lead to a fairer, healthier Scotland and beyond.
For further questions about the AWS programmes and application process, please contact:
AWS Health Equity Initiative: Danielle Morris (ddmaws@amazon.com)
AWS Healthcare Accelerator: Martyna Skowron (martysko@amazon.com)
