Purpose
PandemicTech is a venture philanthropy leading global health security innovation. We are the world’s first innovation ecosystem dedicated to fighting pandemics - a community of innovators backed by a global resource network focused on scaling equitable health security solutions.
PandemicTech is a venture philanthropy: a mission-driven organization that combines venture capital investment and entrepreneurship principles with traditional philanthropic models while creating high impact solutions that prevent, predict, detect, and respond to pandemic infectious disease threats. We identify the most promising innovators on the front lines of fighting Pandemics, help scale these innovations into financially sustainable solutions, and invest in their growth.
PandemicTech believes that local innovators are best equipped to solve local health security challenges impacting their own communities. We support the development of locally driven innovation into financially sustainable solutions that impact local communities and provide opportunities to scale globally. We support the growth of emerging innovation ecosystems creating unique solutions that meet the needs of their communities.
“There are going to need to be some smaller solutions that will look different everywhere, because everywhere is different” -- John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, February 14, 2021
We invest in the most promising financially sustainable solutions to global health security challenges and help scale these innovations globally. We believe that global health security innovation is both investable and critical to pandemic preparedness and response.
Launched in February 2020, the PandemicTech Innovation Fellowship is our initiative to identify and support the most promising global health security innovators leading the fight against pandemic infectious disease threats. The PandemicTech Innovation Fellowship 2020 supported innovators solving health security challenges in Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Australia, Mexico, India, Pakistan, and the United States. We continue to grow our community of Innovation Fellows.
“The Covid-19 pandemic will exact a $16 trillion toll on the U.S. -- four times the cost of the Great Recession -- when adding the costs of lost lives and health to the direct economic impact... Spending on testing and tracing strategies is about 30 times less expensive than the projected economic cost without those policies.” -- Lawrence Summers and David Cutler, Harvard University, 2020
A major first step in developing a platform to scale locally-driven innovations is to create a pipeline of promising innovations. The World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) recognized this need when launching the inaugural WHO Africa Innovation Challenge in November 2018. The Innovation Challenge clearly tapped into an unmet need in the Africa healthcare innovation community, as WHO AFRO received over 2,600 submissions for the challenge over a four week application period. PandemicTech drew on both its Austin-based and worldwide network of experts in infectious disease, global health, and technology innovation to identify expert judges who would review several hundred applications on behalf of the WHO. PandemicTech also participated in the exhibition of the Top 30 Innovators during the Africa Health Forum and has since assisted Innovation Challenge participants in connecting with the technology innovation ecosystem.
PandemicTech appreciates generous foundational support from Laura and John Arnold (Houston, Texas) and support for platform growth from Bill Wood Ventures (Austin, Texas).