General Electric, MCIT organises GE Egypt Digital Innovation Challenge

General Electric (GE) has launched Tuesday GE Egypt Digital Innovation Challenge to encourage Egyptian minds to find digital solutions for some of the country’s industrial challenges in healthcare, transportation and energy. It was organised in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). The initiative is held in cooperation with the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre (TIEC), affiliated to MCIT.

Contestants can submit their technological ideas, projects, and applications during the period from September 5 until November 30. One winner will be selected from each of the three offered categories, and will win a cash award of 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($11,388), as well as an opportunity to receive training to develop their software solution on Predix. Predix is an operating system and platform for building applications that connects industrial assets; collects, and analyzes data; and delivers real-time insights for optimising industrial infrastructure and operations.

The competition calls for students, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), and entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation to submit digital solutions that solve the challenges below. The three sectors included in the competition go hand-in-hand with the government’s current vision for Egypt to drive sustainable development across industries.

In Energy, Egypt has announced a target of doubling the country’s energy efficiency rate, integrating 20 percent of the renewable energy to the energy mix by 2022. The competition seeks a digital solution that will help stabilise the electric grid as various power sources such as gas, wind, solar, and coal go online and offline.

In Healthcare, the Egyptian government aims to achieve equitable access to 80 percent of essential health interventions. The challenge is to develop a digital solution to help track a hospital’s installed base of equipment, and improve process, operations and flow.

In Transportation: Egypt is targeting to raise its share of rail freight operations from 1 percent to 10 percent over the coming 15 years. the competition is looking for a digital solution to remotely monitor the rail fleet and record information about operations, maintenance cycles, and scheduling.

In the region and around the globe, GE approach to open innovation is helping to address customer and country needs more efficiently and effectively. By sourcing and supporting innovative ideas wherever they might come from, GE scale and expertise could be applied to solve some of the world’s toughest challenges.

TIEC was launched in 2010 to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship in the ICT field in Egypt. The Centre aims to promote Egypt as a competitor in the field of global excellent innovations. It is the first centre of its kind in Egypt, the second in Africa, and the fourth in the Middle East and Africa region in terms of being a member accredited at the European Business and Innovation Centers Network (EBN).