GCRF Translation Awards

华威GCRF GRTA将在尼泊尔（最不发达国家）和巴西（UMIC）提供两项与我们的战略完全一致的重点干预措施。第一工作包最初以尼泊尔为重点，是一项与尼泊尔博卡拉的INF耳医院合作生产“中低收入国家负担得起的高质量助听器”的规划，该医院将完成开发和测试世界上第一款既符合世卫组织中低收入国家单位成本目标（占人均GDP的3%）又符合英国国民保健服务临床标准的助听器。高可用性芯片组约占高可用性总成本（物料清单）的90%。沃里克团队采用的新方法是重新利用最近为超低功耗实现“永远在线”人工智能算法而开发的芯片组。当与专有算法相结合时，这些新一代芯片现在已经足够先进，能够以更低的成本与专业应用特定的HA芯片竞争。具体到该奖项的投资，该项目将实现(1)降低助听器（HA）芯片组的成本；(2)开发通过FDA和CE认证的器械（全球认可的医疗器械标准）；(3)与尼泊尔博卡拉的INF耳医院合作，开发与中低收入国家临床工作人员的可用性和技能相一致的HA装配程序；(4)将耳护理服务扩展到尼泊尔的农村社区。目前，听力损失的发病率大约是高收入国家的两到三倍。世卫组织预测，到2030年，听力损失将成为世界第七大疾病负担，排在艾滋病毒、新生儿感染和腹泻病之前。卫生保健技术可带来更大的财政独立，并改善获得主流教育的机会，以实现联合国可持续发展目标1（消除贫困）和可持续发展目标4（普及教育），并符合世界卫生大会第WHA60.29号决议，该决议敦促会员国“收集、核实、更新和交流有关卫生技术，特别是医疗器械的信息，以帮助确定需求的优先次序和分配资源”。工作包2的目标是与巴西国家灾害监测和预警中心Cemaden密切合作，开发、部署和评估移动应用程序和基于社区的干预措施，以提高巴西境内几个城市周边易受洪水影响社区的复原力。该工作包建立在先前全球研究挑战基金奖励成果的基础上，合作伙伴开发并试行了一种方法，使学校、易受洪水影响的社区和地方政府参与与洪水有关的数据的制作和流通，以提高抗洪能力。这一方法已经在巴西<s:1>圣保罗市和里约热内卢布兰科市的两所学校进行了成功的试点，目前正在应用，有必要将其扩展到巴西1000个不同城市的43000个易发洪水的社区。该奖项的具体投资项目将包括：(1)开发一个移动应用程序，使生活在洪水易发社区的学生和市民能够生成有关洪水对当地影响的数据，同时促进有关洪水风险和适应策略的社会学习。(2)为学校和当地利益相关者制定指南和材料，以实施基于移动应用程序的易发社区抗洪干预措施，并将其与学校课程的气候变化适应和灾害预警相关内容相结合。(3)向巴西81所学校推出针对易受洪水影响社区的移动应用程序和干预措施。(4)对以社区为基础的研究干预措施的影响进行严格的监测和评估，以提高洪水抵御能力，并在拉丁美洲传播结果。

The Warwick GCRF GRTA will deliver two focussed interventions, fully aligned with our strategy, in Nepal (LDC) and Brazil (UMIC). Work Package 1 with an initial focus on Nepal, is a programme to produce "Affordable High-Quality Hearing Aids for LMICs" in collaboration with the INF Ear Hospital in Pokhara Nepal, which will finalise development and test the world's first hearing aid (HA) that meets both the WHO's target unit cost (3% of GDP/capita) for low-middle income countries (LMICs) and UK NHS clinical standards. HA chipsets account for approximately 90% of the total cost (Bill of Materials) of a HA. The novel approach taken by the Warwick team has been the re-purposing of chipsets recently developed for ultra-low power implementation of 'always on' artificial intelligence algorithms. When combined with proprietary algorithms these new generation of chips are now sufficiently advanced to be capable of competing with specialist Application Specific HA chips at reduced cost.Specific to investment from this award the project will (1) achieve a reduction in the cost of Hearing Aid (HA) chipsets; (2) develop an FDA and CE certified device (the recognised global standards for medical devices); (3) in collaboration with the INF Ear Hospital in Pokhara Nepal, develop HA fitting procedures that are congruent with the availability and skills of clinical staff in LMICs, (4) expand ear care services to rural communities in Nepal.At the present time the incidence of hearing loss is approximately two-to-three times that in high-income countries, the WHO predict that by 2030, hearing loss will become the World's 7th highest burden of disease ahead of HIV, neonatal infections and diarrheal disease. HA technology leads to greater financial independence and improve access to mainstream education addressing UN SDG 1 (End Poverty) and SDG 4 (Universal Education) and also aligns with World Health Assembly resolution WHA60.29 , which urges member states "To collect, verify, update and exchange information on health technologies, in particular medical devices, as an aid to their prioritization of needs and allocation of resources".Work package 2 is targeted at developing, deploying and evaluating a mobile application and community-based intervention to increase the resilience of flood-prone communities around several cities across the territory in Brazil, in close partnership with Cemaden, the National Disaster Monitoring and Early-Warning Centre in Brazil. This work package builds upon the results of a previous Global Research Challenges Fund award in which the partners have developed and piloted a methodology to engage schools, flood-prone communities and local governments in the production and circulation of flood-related data to improve flood resilience. This methodology has been successfully piloted and is being currently applied in two schools of the cities of São Paulo and Rio Branco in Brazil and there is a need to expand this to other flood-prone communities of 43000 areas in 1000 different municipalities across Brazil. Specific to investment from this award the project will be (1) development of a mobile app to allow school students and citizens living in flood-prone communities to generate data about local impacts of flooding, whilst fostering social learning on flood risks and adaptive strategies.(2) development of guidelines and materials for schools and local stakeholders to implement flood resilience interventions in prone communities based on the mobile app and on the integration of this with contents related to climate change adaptation and disaster early-warning of the school curriculum. (3) roll out the mobile app and interventions for the flood-prone communities to 81 schools across Brazil. (4) Perform a rigorous monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of the community-based research interventions to improve flood resilience, and disseminate results within Latin America.