As the world moves closer to COVID-19 vaccine availability, governments and healthcare organizations will require developing flexible technology solutions/platforms across the entire gamut of vaccine inventory management, administration, appointment scheduling, notifications, outcome monitoring, and other necessary support for a frictionless distribution of billions of doses of vaccines around the country.

The Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) system, which provides real-time information on vaccine stocks and storage temperatures across all cold chain points in the country, is being enhanced to address the needs for distribution and tracking of COVID-19 vaccine.Electronic Vaccine IntelligenceNetwork (eVIN) system is an internet-based digital system to track routine immunisation, vaccine stocks, storage temperature in about 25,000 dedicated cold chain storage points across the country as well as movement of vaccine.

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) along with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare(MoHFW) has launched ‘CoWIN’, a Grand Challenge for strengthening the COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) system, a digitalised platform to be used to effectively roll out and scale up the mechanism for COVID Vaccine Distribution System, nationally.

To harness the talent and innovative ideas of new startups / new technology specialists, Grand Challenge is organised in phase wise manner. Phase-I of this challenge envisages to strengthen the CoWIN Network. This initiative may be further extended to Phase-II to find solutions with respect to different aspects of COVID 19 in the future.

The challenge is now live at https://meitystartuphub.in/

Applications are invited from startups and emerging technology specialists to augment and scale the CoWIN platform. 7 focus areas of technology development have been identified to holistically address the likely limitations associated with complete and effective vaccine distribution system (VDS) and its seamless administration across India.

The Challenge offers total prize money of Rs. 3.85 crores and is open till 15th January 2021. The mechanism for rewarding the successful solution developers for the seven (07) thrust areas begins with providing CoWIN APIs (Application Programming Interface) to the top 5 shortlisted applicants in each category to prove the efficacy of their solutions for possible integration with the platform.

Eligibility

The Indian Tech start-ups, MSMEs, Companies, Limited Liability Partnerships(LLPs) registered in India under Companies Act can apply. The entity must have 51% or more shareholding with Indian citizen or person of Indian origin. The applicant’s entity should not be a subsidiary company of any foreign corporation.

Further to encourage participation from academia and industry, participating teams not mandatorily registered as Companies/ startups/ MSMEs/ LLPs can also apply for the Grand Challenge for Strengthening CoWIN. However, the teams making it to the Stage-2, will be required to apply for registration as Indian Startups/ Company/ MSMEs/ LLPs. It will be expected that by the time of selection at the final stage, necessary registration has been completed.