At the Spanish Red Cross, innovation and technology play a key role in its humanitarian action. Since 2006, the Red Cross Humanitarian Technology Awards have been awarded each year to the best ideas, prototypes or solutions that stand out for their creative and innovative nature in the application of new technologies, for the benefit of humanitarian actions and disadvantaged groups.
The awards promote the consolidation of an ecosystem for collaboration and knowledge around technological innovation at the service of people.
The Red Cross Humanitarian Technology Awards were born in 2016 with the aim of promoting and supporting the design and use of technology to improve and change lives, as well as to scale solutions reaching as many vulnerable people as possible.
The V Edition of these awards has given the recognitions to three works within the following categories:
- IMPACT | The award went to the Vital Soundtrack (Banda Sonora Vital) project for its capacity to transform and benefit the lives of the people for whom the solution is intended. This is a technological solution from the Pompeu Fabra University based on an interactive website for the recovery of the musical memory of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
- IMPULSO | For its potential for scalability within the target audience of the solution and its potential for extension to other areas and groups, the winner was the project: Fields Data. Fields Data provides a solution that facilitates the creation of partnerships based on local knowledge and data science, which helps to streamline and improve decision-making processes in humanitarian interventions.
- RED CROSS CATEGORY | The initiative is chosen from entries submitted by teams from the Spanish Red Cross and other National Societies of the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. The winner was MINUTIS (French Red Cross). Minutis is an application for the management and monitoring of operations carried out by emergency responders.
In addition, this year the Jury recognised two projects with a ‘COVID-19 Special Mention’. COV-RED is the first project aimed at detecting Covid-19 through the automated analysis of wastewater in sewage networks. COVIDWarriors, a non-profit association made up of professional volunteers, senior managers and patrons from all walks of life, united in the fight against COVID-19, also received this mention.
The Jury for the awards was made up of professionals from the Spanish Red Cross and collaborating organisations: Altran, EITHealth, GSMA Mobile World Capital, IBM, Nesplora, University of Zaragoza, Vodafone and MujeresTech. Following the announcement of the winners, a Committee of Experts has been activated and is advising the winners on various topics to help boost and deploy their work, creating a new and growing ecosystem of innovation and humanitarian technology.
