Building community-centred technology that scales.
Solving the world’s hardest problems with the people who live them.
a human-centred future
EXISTING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY ISN’T A MATCH FOR THE WORLD’S HARDEST SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
IDEMS IS BUILDING THE GROUNDBREAKING DIGITAL INNOVATION THAT IS.
Around the world, communities need technology to benefit from transformative impact programmes. But current approaches centre one-size-fits-all technology solutions designed by remote experts on a narrow set of assumptions. When a digital programme doesn’t match the realities of a local context, communities can’t change it. When it fails, they can’t fix it. When it introduces new harms, they have no recourse. And when funding runs out, it quickly becomes obsolete.
IDEMS is building a different model of technology innovation that gives communities agency and ownership. Rather than being passive consumers of digital solutions, communities become active citizens, able to adapt, own and improve digital impact programmes to meet the needs of their local contexts.
IDEMS makes this possible by using a pioneering technical framework that transforms impact programmes into adaptable, swappable components. Transparent, bounded AI agents help non-technologists understand, adapt and combine these components to build applications that work in their own contexts. In contrast to existing solutions, community adaptations maintain a living connection with and contribute to a global programme knowledge base, maintained by experts, that continuously improves for everyone. A community innovation in one place becomes something every community can benefit from.
The result is responsible, community-centred technology that scales impact through local ownership, trust and collaboration.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR HUMAN FLOURISHING.
The origins of next-gen impact tech
THE IMPACT INNOVATION COLLABORATORY
SHAPED BY GLOBAL EXPERTISE.
SUSTAINED BY COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP.
EVOLVED BY EVERYONE.
IDEMS’ pioneering digital programmes and impact-enabling infrastructure emerge from our Impact Innovation Collaboratories. Our impact-trained mathematical scientists, technologists and social scientists work in multidisciplinary partnership with field-leading experts and stakeholder communities to inclusively, sustainably scale proven social programmes with technology.
From our work across Collaboratories, IDEMS is uniquely positioned to identify and make sense of systemic gaps and impediments to scaling impact with existing technology. The most urgent demand is clear from our team’s decades of collaboration: deep human-centred innovation that enables community-level adaptation and ownership of technology and unlocks “collective intelligence” by enabling multidirectional collaboration, sense making and iteration by global experts and local communities at scale.
In this context IDEMS human-centering R&D and product innovation includes:
IMPACT DIGITAL
PROGRAMMES
Conceptualization, pilot impact validation trials and adaptive global scaling (with continuous research validation of impact) of inclusive, context-relevant digital social programmes that enable collaboration among global experts and local communities to address specific impact goals and UNSDGs
IMPACT-ENABLING
INFRASTRUCTURE
Cross-Collaboratory pattern and problem mapping to identify common impediments to collaboratively scaling impact in systemic variability. Conceptualisation, prototyping and applied validation of intervention agnistic enabling sociotechnical frameworks, processes and infrastructure
COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION AT WORK
Impact scales sustainably and affordably when a range of experts and affected stakeholders are empowered to own, control and iteratively evolve impact programming, as relevant to their knowledge, expertise and social networks. Connected, collective community tech.
COMMUNITY IMPACT PILOTS.
EXPERT RESEARCH TRIALS.
ADAPTIVE GLOBAL SCALING.
education
public health
agroecology
climate
biodiversity
IDEMS currently develops the enabling innovation to scale impact in five global collaborations:
education
High-Quality STEM Education
650M+ secondary students globally, with 50M+ in sub-Saharan Africa. Maths failure rates there hover near 80%, resulting in US$Bs in lost earning potential.
IDEMS’ AI-enabled open educational resources (AI-OER) for local adaptation and ownership are in development or pilot in 14 countries.
public health
Reducing Child Abuse
1.1B children under the age of 18 experience violence; ending it reduces poverty in the poorest families by 22% for an estimated value of US$7B/year
Built on prototype IDEMS’ middleware innovation, global parenting programmes are reducing sexual, physical abuse in 4.5M families in 21 countries.
agroecology
Sustainable Food Systems
2B people globally live in smallholder farmer households. Agroecological programmes increase crop yields by 50-70%, worth an estimated $349M/day to farmers earning under $3/day.
IDEMS is developing essential socio-technical tools and practices now in use by smallholder farmers in 10 countries in Africa and South America.
climate
Climate-Resilient Farming
500M+ smallholder farmers globally producing 33% of the world’s food, climate change threatens to reduce yields by 37%. Farmers spend US$368B annually adapting to climate change.
PICSA, built on enabling IDEMS innovation and practice, has trained nearly 1M farmers in 30 countries for a >75% increase in yields.
biodiversity
Resilient Ecosystems
Invasive species prediction, management and loss costs an estimated US$423B annually. Costs are projected to be 20% higher by 2060, with billions of people at increased risk of disease and food insecurity.
Overcoming data and model siloes, IDEMS innovation can scale predictive modelling of invasive-species spread to protect agriculture and biodiversity for an estimated savings of €48.9B/yr.
education
High-Quality STEM Education
An estimated 50M+ secondary students in sub-Saharan Africa. Maths failure rates are ~80%, limiting access to opportunity, trapping millions in poverty and resulting in US$Bs in lost earning potential.
public health
Reducing Child Abuse
1.1B children under the age of 18 experience violence; reducing abuse and improving childhood outcomes reduces poverty in the poorest families by 22% for an estimated value of US$7B/year.
agroecology
Sustainable Food Systems
2B people globally live in smallholder farmer households. Agroecological programmes increase crop yields by 50-70%, worth an estimated £258M/day to farmers earning under $3/day.
climate
Climate-Resilient Farming
500M+ smallholder farmers globally producing 33% of the world’s food, climate change threatens to reduce yields by 37%. Farmers spend US$368B annually adapting to climate change.
biodiversity
Resilient Ecosystems
Invasive species prediction, management and loss costs an estimated US$423B annually. Costs are projected to be 20% higher by 2060; billions of people are at increased risk of disease and food insecurity.
IDEMS GLOBAL RESEARCH & IMPLEMENTATION PARTNERS INCLUDE
{ SPOTLIGHT INNOVATION }
AFFORDABLE,
ACCESSIBLE
HIGH-QUALITY
STEM TEXTBOOKS
FOR EVERY STUDENT
EVERYWHERE.
IDEMS-led Collaboratory innovation addresses
AN IMPACT TECHNOLOGY GAP
AN IMPACT TECHNOLOGY GAP
A crowded landscape of software and digital solutions creates the perception, among experts and funders, that the tech required to cost-effectively, sustainably scale impact already exists. They can’t understand what’s gone wrong when digital programmes, built with available tech and successfully trialled in one context, fail to deliver impact at scale.
But the innovation needed to affordably, sustainably scale impact across global social, digital and economic variability is insufficient or doesn’t exist yet.
Current digital interventions fail to effectively scale impact with existing technology for common reasons.
Existing technology is:
😐 one-size-fits-None
Existing digital programmes scale through replication. But low-resource communities are defined by complex social, digital and economic variability.
👎 tech-centring
Experts identify problems and create solutions. Formative inputs are lost in black-box systems that aren’t transparent, accountable to, or alterable by stakeholders.
☠️ dependency-reinforcing
When a digital programme doesn’t work, communities can’t change it. When it breaks, they can’t fix it. When it causes harm, they have no recourse.
The solution lies in
ADAPTABLE, SCALABLE COMMUNITY TECH
Every Collaboratory digital impact programme is different, yet to inclusively, sustainably scale across global variability they share a common need: The ability to enable local adaptation, ownership and innovation within a single expert-developed, evidence-based global impact programme infrastructure.
Successful programmes enable local adaptation and move toward community ownership while retaining connection to expert-developed, evidence-based impact programming in a single global network.
An Innovative Social Enterprise. A Purpose-Led Team.
AS A UK-BASED COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY, IDEMS HOLDS THE HIGHEST STANDARDS FOR DELIVERING SOCIAL IMPACT, SERVING COMMUNITIES GLOBALLY, DEVELOPING AMBITIOUS INNOVATION AND ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS GROWTH.
IDEMS is a home for purpose-driven mathematical scientists, social scientists and applied technologists reimagining how technology can work for everyone. We attract top mathematical scientists and field-leading experts by offering a challenging and rewarding “third way” career path as an alternative to traditional careers in academia or commercial business.
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