Mobile solutions laboratory mLab Southern Africa has joined forces with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to stimulate more open innovation and development within the mobile health (mHealth) and wellness sector.
The partnership, announced Friday, would include a number of mHealth and wellness programmes to help facilitate knowledge transfer, ideation, development and commercialisation by local experts, students, startups and larger industry partners.
This would include the July launch of the first organisation that would facilitate co-creation projects between university students and companies, known as Demola.
Demola, which would kick off in Cape Town with a dedicated mHealth and wellness stream, would bring together local and international industry; small, medium-sized and microenterprises; and multidisciplinary students to develop solutions for real mHealth and wellness challenges.
In addition, mLab CEO Derrick Kotze highlighted wearable devices as one of the opportunities in mHealth and wellness that could include data and analytical tools, virtual reality, robotics, mobile applications and fashion, offering local innovators and startups a gap to become market leaders in a new economic sector.
“The wearable medical device market, while relatively new, created over $3-billion in market value last year at a compound yearly growth rate of 17.8% in the next four years,” said Kotze, adding that mLab’s vision with this partnership was to accelerate South Africa’s participation in this “rare window of economic opportunity”.
“Wearable technology is expected to reach $ 31.27-billion by 2020 and South Africa is uniquely positioned to not only benefit from this disruptive technology, but also to contribute relevant and innovative local products,” added CSIR researcher Dr Adele Botha.