Public Funding for Oxford University Innovation Limited

In Somalia, only 15% of the population has access to electricity (Somalia National Development Plan). 90% of this electricity is supplied through isolated, diesel-based mini-grids (World Bank), which are costly and unsustainable. Furthermore, reliance on diesel generators does not support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 2030\. Of all the countries in Africa, Somalia has the highest potential for onshore wind power (African Development Bank). Therefore, implementing an affordable and reliable wind energy solution is the obvious choice for increasing energy access in Somalia. This is the aim of the project. The project team is comprised of members from the University of Oxford, ÉireComposites and Save the Children International. They will develop an innovative wind turbine mini-grid system, that will be both affordable and reliable. The mini-grid system will store energy to power electrical appliances, even in the absence of wind. This system will be constructed using locally sourced, off-the-shelf components, making it simple and easy to install. In addition, there will be minimal maintenance that anyone can be trained to carry out. The team will identify a test site in Somalia to install a wind turbine mini-grid system. Implementing the technology in a community that does not have access to electricity will be revolutionary. The power generated could be used to: refrigerate vaccines; power internet access; pump groundwater; provide lighting; and/or charge mobile phones. Furthermore, having a reliable source of renewable electricity will increase income-generating activities and remove the need to purchase fuel. From a broader perspective, in sub-Saharan Africa, only 40% of health centres, half of schools, and 28% of the rural population have access to electricity (World Bank). To continue serving these needs in the future, a social enterprise will be formed to manufacture more wind turbine mini-grid systems. The aim of the social enterprise will be to increase access to renewable, affordable, and reliable energy in sub-Saharan Africa. This project, and the energy produced from these systems, will have the potential to change lives.

* Startups and scaleups have an important weight in the UK economy and in advancing the Industrial Strategy. They are also key to sharing with government many of the social and environmental problems the country (will) face(s) and why impact startups are key to the economic recovery of the country. * Startups are among undertakings most affected by COVID19, an entire generation may never scaleup. With limited liquidity available on the financial markets, there is a need for building an entrepreneurial ecosystem that can support impact startups creating environmentally clean, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs. * This project will develop a 'virtual entrepreneurial ecosystem' that redistributes financial resources (pre-seed) in the form of donations from public and private sector stakeholders to impact startups. * The entrepreneurial ecosystems will connect impact startups from leading UK universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Coventry, Northampton, Birmingham, Warwick, Cranfield, Aston, Nottingham, Leicester, Lougborough, Keele) to public and private donors with an agenda aligned with the SDGs, including venture philanthropist, corporates, public agencies and impact investors. The nexus of the ecosystems will be built using crowdfunding technology, that will allow the flow of funds from donors to the impact ventures. Access to these stakeholders will be ensured by Oxford University Innovation and the European Venture Philanthropy Association. * The experimental research carried throughout the project is based on principles of Agile, Lean Start-up, and Human Centred. And the project will last a total of 9 months. * The project will produce 5 key deliverables: (1) 'virtual entrepreneurial ecosystem' prototype based on crowdfunding tech; (2) Proposal for SDG Partnerships (SDG 17) to ecosystem stakeholders involved in the project; (3) Blueprint for accelerating SDG impact to be used for broader dissemination and ecosystem building, (4) Impact measurement tool to assess the contribution of impact ventures to the SDGs, based on existing models, theories of change and UN Business Benchmarks and results of its empirical application during the project.(5) A use case of the platform consisting of an app addressing loneliness developed by an Oxford startup selected by OUI.

This project will introduce automation of clinical follow-up to enable proactive and timely access to healthcare services for patients, whilst optimising professionals' workload so they can deliver the best, most efficient care. The lead applicant, Ufonia, is a highly innovative digital health platform based on artificial intelligence technologies that can provide autonomous, voice-based conversation with patients in order to assess their health status. This application builds on a successful Innovate UK Feasibility award made to Ufonia and which met its milestones of technical feasibility and user acceptance of the voice-based platform. The solution being developed will be applicable and scalable to most healthcare conditions and pathways. The focus of the first deployment will be to optimise the management of patients requiring cataract surgery, because of the scale of escalating demand for cataract surgery, meaning there is an urgent need to make care pathways as effective and efficient as possible. Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust (BHT), will pilot the first clinical use of the technology. The project is further supported by Oxford AHSN who will provide health economic evaluation and business development (including the Bucks Health and Social Care Ventures Accelerator), the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Hartree Centre who have worked with IBM Watson to support Ufonia's AI development to date, and Oxford University Innovation's Clinical Outcomes Group, who bring academic and business development expertise to the application, licensing and development of patient reported outcome measures.

"Ufonia is an artificially intelligent system, that monitors health and wellness through a conversation with a medical voice 'chat-bot'. This project builds a version of Ufonia to assess the outcome following knee surgery. Traditionally this measurement has been performed using a paper, or sometimes electronic, questionnaire called the Oxford Knee Score (OKS). Whilst this score is a well-established way of assessing the result of surgery, the questionnaires are often not completed, are costly to deliver and limit the feedback of participants to fixed responses. We will be working with the team from Oxford University who authored the OKS to compare whether using Ufonia allows us to capture the same information using a more natural interface -- a voice conversation. This method is simple for everyone to complete without requiring posting and analysing paper questionnaires. It also does not require the use of an electronic device, download of software or any training. Additionally, Ufonia can analyse the overall sentiment of participants response language and capture extra information, beyond the limited structure of the basic questionnaire. This information likely to be important when trying to determine why particular patients improved more or less than others; and when trying to make more subtle distinctions in the outcomes from different treatments. The project will establish the technical feasibility, user acceptance and clinical validity of the system. This will then provide a foundation for the development of similar means of monitoring other patient reported outcomes. Ultimately, we anticipate that Ufonia can be used as a tool to help monitor the health and wellness of patients, without the resource constraints facing healthcare systems throughout the world."