ZzappMalaria Wins IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition With Its Malaria Elimination Platform

ZzappMalaria, the developer of a mobile-app and managerial dashboard that helps eliminate malaria, has won first place in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition as well as the People’s Choice Award as the “Most Inspiring Team”. As part of the award, the company will receive a $3 million prize to continue driving forward its mission of ridding the world of the deadly mosquito-borne disease. 

The IBM Watson AI for Good Competition was launched in 2016 to promote the use of AI to solve the world’s most pressing problems. The competition saw more than 10,000 applicants with teams focusing on a variety of issues who were judged based on their technological achievements, proven impact and potential scalability. The competition concluded today with Zzapp being awarded the first place prize. 

Malaria kills more than 400,000 people yearly, most of whom are children under the age of five, and greatly impedes developing economies. The disease has been eliminated from many countries through large-scale operations that targeted the water bodies in which the malaria-bearing mosquitoes breed. However, similar operations have failed in several African countries due to planning and operational complexities stemming from dispersed geography and tropical climate. Zzapp took upon itself the mission of solving this problem by increasing the cost-effectiveness of such operations, enabling their execution even with limited budgets and under the most challenging environmental conditions.

Zzapp uses AI to tailor optimal malaria-control strategies per village or neighborhood, then breaks down these strategies into clear and manageable tasks. These tasks are allocated to fieldworkers via a unique mobile application, which helps monitor and orchestrates the elimination campaign. The app was designed specifically to address local needs: it has a low battery consumption, does not require continuous internet connectivity and works well even on less advanced smartphones. The app has been tested in six countries across Africa and has been proven to increase coverage of water bodies, shorten work time, improve coordination between the workers and, most importantly, significantly increase the effectiveness of the operation. 

“The Zzapp team is deeply grateful to Xprize and IBM Watson for acknowledging the importance of the fight against malaria,” said Arnon Houri-Yafin, CEO and founder of ZzappMalaria. “We will dedicate the prize money to one ambitious goal: demonstrating that rapid malaria elimination is possible in Sub Saharan Africa.” 

Zzapp is a subsidiary of Sight Diagnostics, a company that developed Parasight™, an AI-based system that has accurately and cost-effectively diagnosed malaria in close to a million malaria tests across 24 countries. The same underlying technology is currently being utilized in Sight OLO^Ⓡ, an FDA 510(k) cleared hematology analyzer that performs lab-grade complete blood count (CBC) -- the world’s most common blood test -- in minutes, using only 2 drops of blood from fingerprick or venous blood sample. Sight is committed to developing and deploying cutting-edge AI technologies for the betterment of human health. The company is proud to see ZzappMalaria recognized today for its potential impact in eradicating malaria.

Governments and organizations looking to deploy ZzappMalaria’s technology in the fight against malaria can visit zzappmalaria.com, or email info@zzappmalaria.com.

About ZzappMalaria

ZzappMalaria was born out of Sight Diagnostics in 2016 with the aim of eradicating malaria worldwide. It developed a system for planning, executing, and monitoring of large-scale and cost-effective malaria elimination campaigns. ZzappMalaria’s solution focuses on larviciding - thorough treatment of stagnant water bodies in which mosquitoes breed. Its algorithm tailors optimal and localized malaria elimination strategies, and its mobile app allocates assignments to workers, guides them in the field, and enables them to easily upload data to a designated dashboard. ZzappMalaria’s machine learning capabilities continuously improve the system’s efficacy from one operation to the next. The project has won several grants, among them from the Gates Foundation and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), and has been conducting anti-malaria operations in Ghana, Zanzibar, Kenya and Ethiopia. Learn more at zzappmalaria.com. 

About XPRIZE

XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest challenges. Active competitions include the $20 Million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, $10 Million XPRIZE Rainforest, $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE, $6 Million XPRIZE Rapid COVID Testing, the $5 Million IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, $5 Million XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling, and $500K Pandemic Response Challenge. For more information, visit xprize.org.

About Sight Diagnostics 

Founded in 2011, Sight Diagnostics aims to transform health systems and patient outcomes through fast, accurate and convenient blood diagnostic testing. Sight’s technology, developed over a decade of research, represents breakthrough innovations in diagnostic methodology by combining artificial intelligence (AI) with a new method for “digitizing” blood. Sight’s latest blood analyzer, Sight OLO, performs a Complete Blood Count, the most commonly ordered blood test, in minutes. OLO creates a digital version of a blood sample by capturing more than 1,000 highly detailed images from just two drops of blood obtained from a finger prick or venous sample. These images are then interpreted by proprietary and fully automated AI algorithms. Sight’s first product, Parasight^TM, has been used to detect malaria in almost 1 million tests across 24 countries. The company has rapidly growing offices in the US, the UK and Israel. Learn more at www.SightDX.com.

Contact Information

Gabriela Lund

Senior Account Executive

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