“The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, what the world needs most are dreamers that do.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach

The challenge of providing high quality palliative care and bereavement support to all people in Africa is huge.

To achieve this, we need to move beyond the status quo and think ‘outside of the box’ to come up with radical new ideas to achieve this pressing goal.

We are inviting you to submit your idea for an innovation: nothing is too radical! This is an opportunity for ‘blue-sky thinking’, so prior research or formal evaluation of an idea are not essential.

Submission Format

• What is the challenge you have identified? (600 Characters)
• What is your radical idea to address this challenge? (600 Characters)
• Why do you think your idea will be successful? (600 Characters)

What is Innovation?

As we have said, we take a broad view, but here are some helpful grounding of how we'll be thinking about it:

WHO defines innovation as "encompassing the novel creation, adoption or adaption of policies, practices, systems, technologies, services and delivery methods within care to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, quality, safety or affordability of the care available" — WHO, 2016. Source

Innovation is “the adoption of new and established technologies alike, the use of scaled organisational models, and data-driven care delivery” (p. 3) — Roland et al., Imperial College London, 2022.

We define innovation in palliative care as the development or application of new ideas, services, tools, or approaches that improve the quality, accessibility, delivery, equity, or effectiveness of care for individuals with serious illnesses and their families. This includes novel practices or adaptations that address existing challenges in unique, scalable, and sustainable ways.

Live Competition

Top scoring submissions will have the opportunity to present at the competition to be held during the 8th International African Palliative Care & Allied Services Conference 2025 in Gaborone, Botswana in September 2025.

This will be in the form of a rapid 5 minute presentation, followed by 5 minutes of questions from a judging panel and from audience members. Finalists are expected to attend the conference in-person (No additional funding to support participants attending is available).

Prize(s) will be awarded for the best idea(s), along with the opportunity for mentorship to support steps towards implementation of the idea. Additional commended submissions will also be shared in an innovation ideas report / compilation to be published in conjunction with the conference.

Launch Webinar

For more detailed guidance, please join us for the following event - also available to watch afterwards via the link below:

APCA Radical Innovation Competition LAUNCH WEBINAR
Friday 30th May 2025, 16.00 East Africa Time

• Introduction to the competition
• A brief overview of innovation theory
• Presentations of examples of previous radical ideas that have since become established in palliative care in Africa
• Opportunity for questions

Joining link here

Key Dates

• Submissions are open NOW: https://forms.gle/mV3xVx1tGdvHgoUCA
• Closing date: 11th July 2025
• Outcome notification: 31st July 2025