Chipside and ORCHA: WITSA Global ICT Excellence Award Winners 2022

We are delighted to congratulate our members who have won this year’s WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards. Organised by the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA), the prestigious Global ICT Excellence Awards recognise exceptional achievements in using ICT to benefit societies, governments, individuals, organisations and the private sector.

Initiated 20 years ago, at the 2000 World Congress on IT in Taipei, WITSA awards select the most impactful and innovative candidates from over 80 countries.

On the second day of the 2022 World Congress on Innovation and Technology (WCIT 2022), WITSA announced that 20 private and public sector organizations from four different continents were selected to receive the 2022 WITSA Global Innovation and Tech Excellence Awards, a special WITSA Chairman’s Award as well as two WITSA Eminent Person Awards.

This year, techUK members have been recognised on a global scale, winning in two of the awards. We are excited to congratulate our members who have been recognised in this year’s awards:

• Chipside: Winner of the 2022 Smart Cities Award (Private Sector/NGO)
• ORCHA: Winner of the 2022 Innovate E-Health Solutions Award (Private Sector/NGO)

Commenting on this year’s results, Julian David, techUK’s CEO, said:

“The UK tech sector is one of our modern economic success stories and our members are at the forefront of developing innovative technologies and we are delighted to see that their excellent work has been recognised at a global level. This year’s winners showcase how the application of tech to the wider economy and our public services has huge potential rewards and are a testament to the competitiveness of the UK’s technology sector. I would like to congratulate both Chipside and ORCHA who have won this year’s awards.”

Speaking about this year’s awards, WITSA Chairman Yannis Sirros said:

“The Selection committee for the 2022 the Global Innovation and Tech Excellence Awards had the honor of reviewing well over 100 well-qualified, unique and remarkable award submissions. I would also like to congratulate all of the winners for the superb job that they are doing in bringing the benefits of digital technology to children, citizens, governments, education, science, healthcare, the environment, industries and societies as well as nearly every aspect of our life.”

2022 Smart Cities Award (Private Sector/NGO): Chipside Ltd

Chipside is a specialist software development company providing products and services to around a quarter of local and regional government traffic authorities in the UK. They have been developing advancements in smart parking technology to maintain personal mobility while achieving net zero, reducing congestion, protecting the economy, both personal and societal. Innovate UK have funded a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) that will support Chipside Ltd in setting out a strategic systems roadmap to 2025, which brings local government parking, city access, and vehicle movement in line with the ten-point plan set out by local government. The KTP will combine specially developed algorithms with the latest thinking in AI applications. This will enable Chipside Ltd to develop a suite of real-time AI decision services, designed to enable local authorities to better understand and control their regional transport networks.

2022 Innovate E-Health Solutions Award (Private Sector/NGO): ORCHA

Orcha exists to make digital healthcare healthy. Their digital health quality management platform delivers the core infrastructure needed to introduce digital health safely. This award-winning technology is used by national bodies, healthcare providers and digital health innovators in twelve countries. It delivers a systematic approach to assessing, accrediting, deploying and embedding digital health technologies into clinical services and pathways, using a risk management approach, that has long been in place for medicine.

The Nordic region aims to be the most integrated health region in the world by 2030, according to the Nordic Council of Ministers. A shift towards digital health, and its focus on the self-management of health by Nordic populations, will be an important step on this journey, but it also brings new risks. Despite the 350,000 digital health technologies on the market, no standardised regulation or risk management system is in place in any of the Nordic countries. This has left medical professionals unable to find and prescribe digital technologies safely.

To resolve this critical issue and lead the world in adopting connected health technologies on a large scale, the Nordic Digital Health and Evaluation Criteria (NordDEC) programme, has been created. The NordDEC is a world-first programme to unify digital health standards across multiple countries, delivering safe digital health across Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland. The accreditation framework was developed by UK-based, ORCHA, the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps, and the project is funded jointly by NIP and the Nordic healthtech industry.

For more information on techUK's acitivites for SME members, including events and insights, visit the SME Connect or alternatively contact our Head of SME Engagement, Ed Bevan by email at: [email protected].