StartupBlink has just ranked cities of the world by the number and quality of anti-covid innovative solutions. In the list, which includes 80 cities from 31 countries, Moscow ranks third — behind San Francisco and New York City, but ahead of such major cities as Toronto, Tel Aviv, London, Taipei and Paris.
Among Moscow’s innovative projects in this field are Medsenger, a telemedicine consultation service that has been used to monitor Covid-19 symptoms remotely, and DocDoc (now SberHealth), a medical appointment and online consultation service. A variety of other local solutions were awarded with the ‘RuNet Prize’ in December 2020.
However, several events last year tarnished the Russian capital’s anti-covid tech record. During the spring lockdown, technical experts and human rights activists challenged the city’s QR coronavirus quarantine plans. In December, the mayor’s office admitted that some 300,000 Moscow Covid-19 patients had been affected by a huge data breach.
In StartupBlink’s latest general city ranking, published in May 2020, Moscow was ranked #9. The Russian capital was well behind New York, London, Los Angeles and Boston, but not that far from Beijing, Tel Aviv and Berlin. This ranking aims to mesure the development of startup ecosystems across the world.
“Moscow’s startup ecosystem surprised us with an outstanding amount of technical talent,” StartupBlink wrote. The report also underlined the city’s “special R&D potential in AI and Big Data,” and considers it to be “a center of creativity in Europe.”
- Click here to see StartupBlink’s Coronavirus Innovation Map
