Idems International

IDEMS is a technology social enterprise founded on the belief that inclusive ambitious tech innovation is needed to address the urgent social, environmental and economic challenges that disproportionately affect marginalised and low-resource communities around the world. IDEMS develops innovative sociotechnical digital infrastructure, products and interventions that enable underserved communities globally to access proven expert-developed solutions and interventions—and contribute local knowledge, best practices and new ideas—for groundbreaking collaborative “collective intelligence” intervention innovation. Designed to work in, for and across variable low-resource contexts, IDEMS’ inclusive, sustainable digital innovation is built for interoperable, adaptive scaling across global variability. IDEMS innovation emerges from long-term, research-based collaborations. Our expert team embeds with global experts, NGOs and local communities to develop digital interventions that responsibly, adaptively scale to address global grand challenges—the complex development problems (sometimes referred to as “wicked problems”) impervious to simple, one-size-fits-all solutions and ill-served by most existing tech platforms and services. Across collaborations, IDEMS is gaining the visibility and insight to develop a suite of community-serving “common tech” digital products that are an inclusive, responsible alternative to mainstream solutionist tech. Our common tech product suite builds on pioneering research-based mathematical innovation to introduce foundational low-skill digital infrastructure that enables non-technologist stakeholders to collaboratively develop, adapt and iterate pioneering tech solutions that can scale in global complexity. Communities gain and maintain local ownership and control—and bypass existing solutionist tech, designed and gatekept by siloed technologists. IDEMS is the winner of the UK Social Enterprise 2024 International Impact Award.