Focus: Innovation Accelerator
BioPREVAIL Innovation is the core of the BioPREVAIL ecosystem: the program that hosts our annual Innovation Challenges and supports the teams they surface. It exists to find, accelerate, and back bold interdisciplinary solutions that strengthen biosecurity.
Biosecurity is not contained by the walls of a laboratory. It depends on every activity along the pathogen value chain*: the collection and testing of samples in the field, their transportation, their handling in the laboratory, the disposal of infectious waste, and the management of bio-repositories. A weakness at any point along that chain is a weakness across all of it.
Each annual Innovation Challenge directs the efforts of scientists, engineers, technicians, entrepreneurs, and policymakers at a defined part of that chain. Our first challenge addressed the built environment of the laboratory. The challenges that follow reach beyond it, into the practices, processes, and systems that surround the laboratory and connect it to everything else.
We focus particularly on the points along the chain most exposed in resource-constrained and rapidly changing environments, where operational failure carries national, regional, and global consequences.
Rather than promoting innovation for its own sake, BioPREVAIL Innovation prioritizes solutions that are practical, scalable, context-responsive, and capable of strengthening biosecurity wherever along the chain the risk actually sits.
Innovation Challenge – The Full Chain
Areas of interest across the chain
01: Field collection and testing
- Pathogen-agnostic field diagnostics and miniaturised, field-ready instrumentation
- Quality assurance for diagnostics and biological materials in low-infrastructure settings
- Just-in-time biosafety and biosecurity training for surge workforces
02: Transportation
- Chain-of-custody tracking built for remote and low-infrastructure routes
- Condition and integrity monitoring that also detects tampering and diversion
03: Laboratory handling
- Sustainable laboratory design and retrofitting
- Energy and water resilience solutions
- Insider threat detection and access assurance
- Digital tools for biorisk compliance and standards implementation
04: Waste disposal
- Waste management and environmental systems
- Infectious waste treatment suited to constrained settings
05: Bio-repository management
- Secure pathogen data sharing where samples cannot move
- Traceability and attribution tools
Across the whole chain
- Locally manufacturable technologies and materials
- Cross-sector technology adaptation
- Operational and lifecycle sustainability tools
How BioPREVAIL Innovation Challenges Work
Designed for impact
Each design challenge is built around concrete laboratory system problems identified through engagement with national experts, facility managers, and technical specialists.
Fast-paced, practical development
Through intensive design sprints, innovators rapidly accelerate the development of technologies to address laboratory challenges. Teams receive structured mentorship, technical guidance, and targeted learning to strengthen feasibility and performance.
Grounded in local realities
Solutions are created to work within the constraints, capacities, and infrastructure of the settings where they will be used.
Pathway to piloting and scale
Promising solutions progress through laboratory pilots across the BioPREVAIL network, generating real world evidence and enabling scale through partnerships.
Current Challenge
BioPREVAIL x CEPI Biosecurity Innovation Challenge
The BioPREVAIL × CEPI Biosecurity Innovation Challenge identifies and incubates solutions that keep laboratory biosafety and biosecurity strong under 100 Days Mission conditions — and that hold once the surge has passed. Delivered by the Global Health Security Fund through BioPREVAIL with CEPI, it culminates in a public showcase at the World Health Assembly in May 2027.
Be Part of the Solution
Join us to strengthen sustainable laboratory systems. Collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and regions is not possible without you.