Recent graduates Karina Thakrar and Dr. Neil Pinto have created PINT (Plasma In Need For Transfusion) Network – a website that is based on a matchmaking algorithm that, quickly and efficiently, matches plasma donors with Covid-19 patients in need.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, schools around the world were forced to close and many students did not have the opportunity to attend the traditional graduation ceremonies. But a group of 8 students from an elementary school in Japan were determined not to miss the opportunity to celebrate. So, they turned to the popular block-building game Minecraft to solve the problem.

Sabrina Paseman’s brother-in-law is a hospital worker and reported that, soon after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United stated, the hospital was quickly running out of N95 protective masks. Trying to help, Sabrina spent some days calling mask manufacturers to see where they could source more masks but ended up realizing that the supply would not be enough to cover the high demand.

Heidi Hertel is a mother of 3. When her oldest daughter was 3-years-old, her school teacher found something unusual with her eyes which, after a visit to the eye doctor, turned out to be a serious eye condition called Strabismus. And, after taking her middle daughter for a checkup, they found that she would also need to wear glasses.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many seniors living in nursing homes or assisted care facilities were feeling alone and isolated. Likewise, having to stay at home was also being very challenging for children. The Goodnight Zoom platform was created to fulfill the needs of engagement and connection of both senior and children, by allowing seniors to read bed time stories to the kids.

Groups of makers around the World came together during the Covid-19 pandemic to produce protective equipment to tackle the overall shortage of these essential materials.

One such group, called Precious Plastic, started doing the same but with a focus on protecting the environment. Precious Plastic is a community of makers, with workspaces all around the world, which aims to reduce plastic waste and create an alternative global recycling system.

Due to the unprecedented challenges humanity was facing, brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, many people were feeling their mental health deteriorating. To help people navigate these feeling, Dr. Michael Bohne and Dr. Sabine Ebersberger, two experienced psycotherapists, developed the INSIDE-LIFE card set.

“Isolation is really a hard thing for seniors in the best of times. Now they can’t even get together and see each other for meals”, is how Mitch Bennet explains the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has on the elderly living in nursing homes and assisted care facilites, who were left feeling very isolated.

While going for a walk during the Covid-19 pandemic, Professor Richard Wiseman felt as though he was living in a computer game "having to avoid joggers and cyclists etc", to keep the recommended social distance.

In Brussels, the public bus company wanted to uplift the citizens during lockdown by creating the Voices of Brussels bus, which drove around the city spreading messages of love and hope.

Freddie Howells’ great aunt is 88-years old, suffers from dementia and lives alone at home. But the family was increasingly worried about episodes where she had let strangers inside the house. “I was concerned about the fact she never knew if people visited and had a lot of cold callers and let people in. The next thing, she's spent £120 on insurance, had a washing machine and signed up to anything”, Freddie’s mum explained.

Kevin Ching, a physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, was working with Covid-19 patients during the pandemic and realized it was very important to share the hands-on knowledge they had acquired to other medical workers. He had the idea of creating a Virtual Reality video that demonstrated best practices in treating Covid-19 patients, especially for training medical personnel in remote areas without teaching hospitals or with less access to teaching materials.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, people had to follow certain health a safety measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Such measures include social distancing, which was especially challenging in enclosed spaces, such as restaurants and bars. To help solve this problem, Sweden developers Chris Mortimer and Stephen O’Callaghan launched BYEVID, a free app that helps to manage capacity inside these businesses and help people to safely return to their daily lives.

To help nursing homes and assisted care facilities monitor their residents, one of the most vulnerable groups affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, Portuguese company Create IT launched a new, free platform call “+Próximo” (“Closer”, in English”).

14-year-old Freddie has been creating devices to help his great-aunt Pat, who suffers from dementia. Freddie developed an interest in engeneering at an early age, as he explains “So, I joined a code club in my primary school, in year for or five, and I learnt coding through there and I’ve loved coding ever since”.

When she was 15 years old, Ruth Amos created the StairSteady as part of a school project. She was originally inspired to develop the StairSteady – a stair climbing device for the elderly or people with disabilities - for the father of one of her teachers. "It was initially for my teacher's father who'd had a stroke - we decided that we wanted to design something to help him because he'd been told to keep active but he wasn't able to", Ruth explains.

Alex Johnson and Jonathon Walker are students at Rutheford High School, in Florida. They have developed a device for the visually impaired that can turn text into braille, and vice versa.

Cathy Thompson’s daughter, Mackenzie, was diagnosed with amblyopia (“lazy eye”) at the age of 3, and was required to wear an eye-patch to correct her condition. However, Cathy found it very challenging to motivate her daughter to wear the eye patch, which she had to wear “all day, every day”. Cathy found that the design of the available eye patches was not very appealing and did not help to encourage her daughter to wear them.

In Singapore, the National University Health System and Bot MD, an AI healthcare startup, have developed SGDormBot – an AI-powered chatbot that allows physicians to monitor the health of residents at six dormitories for migrant workers.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Portuguese government ordered the temporary suspension of dentistry and stomatology practices, except in cases of emergency, due to the potential for infection during those procedures. “The proximity with the oral cavity, as well as the ease of transmission of the coronavirus through particles that spread in the air, raises the necessity of providing a higher degree of protection for oral care professionals”, explained Miguel Pais Clemente.