Innovate for Impact: A Roadmap to Sustainable Technology Beyond AI

This book explores the synergy between artificial intelligence and medtech, offering a roadmap toward achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. These technologies are part of a wave of innovation transforming how we learn, work, communicate, and live, from self-driving cars to AI-designed drugs and quantum computing. Yet most advances remain concentrated in high-income countries, leaving many low-income nations struggling to keep up.

I examine the social, political, and economic factors limiting development, highlight successful strategies, and explore AI and biotechnologies. Through case studies, the book shows how these tools can improve healthcare access, promote sustainable agriculture, and tackle other global challenges while considering ethical implications. By focusing on solutions accessible to low-income countries, it offers insights for innovators in middle- and high-income nations launching ventures with limited resources.

Future trends rely on interdisciplinary approaches integrating economy, sociology, and technology, recognizing that climate change, new health challenges, demographic shifts, and technologies are reshaping societies worldwide. Developing and advanced economies are deeply interconnected, making this broader perspective essential.

This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of international development and public health, as well as those working in development, humanitarian initiatives, or innovation-focused startups and companies targeting low-resource environments.

Praise for Innovate for Impact

“This book exemplifies engaged scholarship: analytically sharp, normatively bold, and policy-relevant. Crimi turns innovation into a matter of governance, offering a refreshing and much-needed guide to shaping it for the public good…” — Alberto Alemanno, a Jean Monnet professor in EU law at HEC Paris, author of “Lobbying for Change”

“I can summarize my understanding of this book as follows: if you are a grassroots organizer, NGO practitioner, or public policymaker with a strong desire to tackle persistent public challenges, this book is for you. Professor Crimi offers an alternative way of approaching complex social problems through a systems-thinking perspective. He encourages readers to understand the broader environment surrounding a problem…” — Abdo Elnasar Degoot, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Alessandro Crimi completed his studies in engineering at the University of Palermo, earned a PhD in machine learning applied to medical imaging from the University of Copenhagen, and later obtained an MBA in healthcare management from the University of Basel. He carried out post-doctoral research at leading European institutions, including INRIA, ETH Zurich, the Italian Institute for Technology (IIT), and the University Hospital of Zurich, where he made notable contributions to computational neuroscience. During these years, his work in European research institutes was interspersed with extended periods in Ghana and other sub-Saharan countries, where Dr. Crimi taught and led in-field projects focused on healthcare management. He spent eight years teaching machine learning in medicine at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Ghana and South Africa, supervising numerous MSc theses, and in parallel co-founded a biotech startup operating between Ghana and Switzerland. Following his move to Sano, the Centre for Computational Medicine in Poland, where he is a research group leader, he reduced his involvement with AIMS, overseeing a select number of MSc theses. His current teaching activities are primarily associated with AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, where he is a professor. Dr. Crimi is also actively involved in initiatives that promote entrepreneurship among women and individuals with immigrant backgrounds, as well as technology transfer projects aimed at supporting young scientists.