The merSETA
VIROVENT
INNOVATION SKILLS
CHALLENGE
Various institutions got together under the lead of University Cape Town (UCT), namely University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), University of the Witwatersrand (WITs), Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and National Technologies Implementation Platform (NTIP), also known as Production Technologies Association of South Africa (PtSA), and successfully applied for grant funding in terms of Challenge. Collectively, the consortium is called as “MediVentors”.
What gave RISE to the merSETA ViroVent Innovation Skills Challenge?
With the SA outbreak of COVID in 2020 it was decided that the country needed to develop skills for medical device innovation – while using COVID as a backdrop to learn about satisfying real-world medical industrialisation demands.
Various organisations including the National Ventilator Project (NVP), MerSETA and others initiated the challenge.
What is the goal of the merSETA ViroVent Innovation Skills Challenge?
Promote innovation
To deliver a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which promotes rapid technology innovations from post-school learning institutions to manufacturing and engineering work-places in the MedTech domain.
Establish relationships
To establish relationships between universities – and between universities and industry, to facilitate future industrialisation of innovation and employment.
Supply skills
To encourage Higher Education Institutions towards the supply of skills in a new manufacturing and 4th Industrial Revolution paradigm.
What are the key outcomes of the merSETA ViroVent Innovation Skills Challenge?
Support between 33 students from four universities to participate in an Integrated Skills Development Programme (ISDP) around medical device industrialisation.
The development and subsequent deployment of a training curriculum, as part of an ISDP solution, to prepare students for medical innovation industrialisation both as employees or entrepreneurs.
Training-by-doing of students in the industrialisation of a specific medical device to support the fight against COVID-19.