Today, Intel has pledged an additional $50 million to combat the coronavirus pandemic by accelerating access to technology at the point of patient care and speeding up scientific research. This is in addition to the prior $10 million in donations to support local communities during this COVID-19 outbreak.
Of the $50 million, approximately $40 million will fund the Intel COVID-19 Response and Readiness and Online Learning initiatives. Intel would be using technologies including AI, high-performance computing, and edge-to-cloud service delivery to accelerate diagnosis and treatment and vaccine development. Through the initiative, Intel is aiming to help healthcare solution manufacturers increase the availability of technology and solutions used by hospitals to diagnose and treat COVID-19.
‘Intel COVID-19 Response and Readiness will also support the creation of industry alliances to accelerate worldwide capacity, capability and policy to respond to pandemics of this kind in future,’ Intel said in a blog post.
The Intel Online Learning Initiative will support education-focused non-profit organisations and business partners to provide students without access to technology with devices and online learning resources.
The remaining $10 million would be used for an innovation fund, which will support requests from external partners and employee-led relief projects, addressing critical needs in their communities. For example, Intel is working with India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, to deploy Intel client and server solutions to help achieve faster and less expensive COVID-19 testing and coronavirus genome sequencing to understand the epidemiology and AI-based risk stratification for patients with comorbidities.
The company has also partnered with India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies to build an application ecosystem and multi-cloud backend to enable population-scale COVID-19 diagnostics, predict outbreaks, and improve medical care management and administration.
The $10 million-donation announced earlier includes 1 million gloves, masks, and other equipment for healthcare workers, $6 million from the Intel Foundation toward relief efforts in local communities, and $4 million from Intel and its subsidiaries around the globe.
