SPACE HELPING UK ON COVID-19 AND OTHER PANDEMICS

Description

The amplitude of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented associated impacts this has on the daily life of populations worldwide, ESA, in collaboration with the UK Space Agency (UKSA), is leveraging on existing tools such as the Business Applications-Space Solutions programme to release a dedicated CfP to support the fight against this major virus outbreak. For many years, ESA hasbeen in the forefront of promoting the utilisation of space technologies and know-how to support the improvement and developmentof solutions for the Health sector. Possible examples include the utilisation of space based telecommunications to provide broadband communications for Telemedicine, Earth Observations data and Positioning for epidemiology mapping and the reuse or adaptations of technologies initially developed to support astronaut health during manned space missions. Many of the activities supported by ESA and carried out by industry, service providers and healthcare institutions have been deployed in concrete operational environments and have proved to deliver substantial benefits in terms of better access of quality care, faster response and optimisation of resources. Today, the unprecedented situation caused by the characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic are saturating the emergency departments of many hospitals and are creating a huge stress on the screening processes. Beside the specific issues related to the COVID-19 outbreak, all the remaining parts of the traditional healthcare system are also heavily affected. As a consequence, many European Countries are in the process of taking extremely challenging measures, to limit the propagation of the virus and to treat the affected people while maintaining, to the possible extent, the normal operations of their healthcare systems. ESA, in cooperation with UKSA, isnow calling for actions in order to facilitate the quick integration and deployment of concrete and sustainable solutions to contribute to alleviate the stress on the healthcare ecosystem, which will make use of the different advantages provided by space-based products and services. In response to this initiative, projects can be proposed by European consortia to integrate, deploy andvalidatesolutions in the field of Health utilising space contributions.

Tender Specifics