Chilean Navy turns to open innovation to solve preventive health challenges

Since 2019, it has run the Desafío Avante call to attract startups that solve technological challenges. It has just launched its third edition.

Source: Diario Financiero

In 2019, the Chilean Navy (Armada de Chile) created a research, development and innovation policy. In this context, Desafío Avante was born in 2020: an open innovation call that seeks to solve strategic technological challenges in the naval and maritime sphere with startups that can become suppliers to National Defense and also to the market.

On October 14, it launched the third edition of Desafío Avante, which this year focuses on Active Health, addressing the modernization of the preventive medicine model based on data, in order to provide the Navy with physically and psychologically healthy personnel, along three priority lines: health data collection, definition of risk indexes, and dynamic scheduling of medical care.

The deputy director of the Navy’s R&D (Research and Development) Programs Directorate, Captain Francisco Mackay, says that adopting the open innovation model responds to the need to “leverage” advanced human capital outside the institution and to maximize the probability of successful transfers. They had previous experience developing innovations, but “we weren’t able to generate the technology transfer to deliver it to industry.”

He notes that after analyzing the changes in the country’s innovation ecosystem over the past 20 years, with the emergence of Becas Chile, the National Innovation Council and Start-Up Chile, they began to think about opening up so that third parties could solve their challenges and problems. “Involving the ecosystem also meant bringing fresh air, new players and new dynamics to the technology ecosystem for Defense,” says Mackay.

In 2019, the same year they drew up the research, development and innovation policy, they created the Technological Research Center, the entity in charge of identifying the problems to be solved with the innovation ecosystem and designing the business model to scale these solutions.

Solutions for the Navy and the market

The Desafío Avante call is organized together with Know Hub Chile. Its executive director, Javier Ramírez, says the relationship with the Navy began because “we saw that in the field of Defense, a science, technology, knowledge and innovation ecosystem was not being developed despite the tremendous capabilities.”

They designed the Dual Tech methodology, which seeks systematic collaboration with the Navy to develop solutions that can be applied both within the institution and in the market.

To date, two editions of Desafío Avante have been held. In 2020 the theme was Maritime Domain Awareness, with challenges to detect illegal fishing, illicit activities, non-cooperative contacts and anomalous behavior of ships and vessels. In 2021, the challenges were related to the availability of naval assets, specifically the proper functioning of ships.

The winning startups and solutions were Acústica Marina and InnerCore in 2020, and JakSol, Streltech and PredictiveLab in 2021.

For the third call, which will remain open until January 30, 2023, teams can submit technological solutions in one or more of the established lines.

The winners will gain access to a work program with Know Hub Chile and resources to implement the development plan and the technology.