History
InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters) was organized in 2006-2007 to serve as a catalyst to empower individuals and organizations by harnessing technology for more effective action in early warning, prevention and response to disasters and public health threats. The founders’ vision was an organization that would help make the world safer by making technological innovations available and accessible to humanitarian and public health organizations working to conquer complexities of some of the world's most challenging realities.
InSTEDD was conceived and named by Dr. Larry Brilliant, a well-known preventive medicine and public health doctor with a strong interest in technology, who co-founded “The Well,” an early online community, and founded the Seva Foundation, whose mission is to eradicate preventable and curable blindness. These accomplishments and his significant role in the global eradication of smallpox were among the reasons he was honored with a TED Prize in 2006.
| During his acceptance speech, Dr. Brilliant shared his wish to develop an early detection and early response system that would serve to warn the world of developing threats, saving more lives through earlier, more collaborative and more effective prevention and response. Soon thereafter, his wish became a 501(c)3 nonprofit named INSTEDD – International Networked System for Total Early Disease Detection (ending in “TEDD” – a clever play on “TED”), created with initial funding from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, headed by Dr. Brilliant. |
In October 2007, Dr. Eric Rasmussen, director of the Strong Angel series of international humanitarian support demonstrations, was selected as InSTEDD’s first CEO. In focusing the organization on the prediction, discovery and evaluation of disruptive global events, Dr. Rasmussen and the InSTEDD team he assembled expanded the founder’s original concept to include natural disasters and human-caused emergencies, re-defining the original acronym InSTEDD as “Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters.”
Today, the InSTEDD team has dozens of conversations in play with those involved in humanitarian and relief for emergencies and public health crises throughout the world. From Cambodia to Bangladesh to Tajikistan to Ghana to Peru, InSTEDD staff and partners are living with those populations, helping shape the right role technology can play in their world. We're defining, together with those living at risk, how we help the vulnerable stay safe.