President of the Aga Khan University (AKU) Firoz Rasul, CEO of the Ignite National Technology Fund Yusuf Hussain have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to bring revolution in healthcare and biomedicine by mutually support startups emerging advanced ideas.
Federal Minister for Information and Technology Dr Khalid Siddiqui, University Provost Carl Amrhein, Vice-Provost Anjum Halai, Director of AKU’s Critical Creative Innovation Thinking Forum Dr Asad Mian and representatives from government and the university present in MoU signing ceremony,
Dr Khalid Siddiqui spoke about the role of government in producing an environment in which revolution could flourish. He said “The modern knowledge economy flourishes on originality and the merging together of expertise from different industries, Partnerships are an important tool that brings together the most committed people to handle challenging problems around them and to discover global trends and opportunities.”
Details of MOU include that Ignite supports a nationwide network of incubators across Pakistan that try to solve local problems and to empower young businesses to target global opportunities in health, education, energy, agriculture, telecommunications, finance and other industries.
The AKU offer its facilities as well as the expertise of its faculty to Ignite’s existing and future startups, empowering them to grow meaningful ventures and partnerships to bring revolution in the healthcare sector.
In turn, Ignite will support startups being matured through AKU’s i2s. In the long-term, the AKU and Ignite will also support one another on launching a specialised healthcare and bio medicine incubator in the country.
Yusuf Hussain commented on the agreement that this partnership will allowing us to address the complete value chain of deep health tech innovation, including lab facilities, trials, regulation, incubation, mentorship, and funding with the aim of targeting domestic and foreign markets with world-class artificial intelligence, augmented reality, Internet of things and other fourth industrial revolution-based products.
Firoz Rasul commented on the agreement that both organizations have unique strengths that would be of great use to today’s entrepreneurs. We share an essence of collaboration and development of new ideas which are key ingredients for innovation. Universities are engines of innovation and this partnership will give ambitious innovators access to the expertise they need to introduce low cost, sustainable solutions to today’s healthcare challenges.”