Johnson & Johnson Innovation and its pharmaceutical arm, Janssen Research & Development, have teamed up with Finnish agencies Sitra, Tekes and VTT, to launch a challenge based on Finland’s famous baby box.

The box, which is given to the parents of every newborn baby, celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, hence the partners are encouraging innovators to come up with novel solutions to promote child health and healthy parenting in the Next-Gen Baby Box QuickFire Challenge. Select finalists will receive up to US$350,000 to develop their ideas.

“The Baby Box is a Finnish innovation that has been distributed to new mothers for 80 years with successful results, as infant and maternity mortality rates are among the lowest worldwide,” said Pekka Ihalmo, Public Affairs Manager, Janssen-Cilag Oy. “We are greatly inspired by these effects that the Baby Box has had on Finnish babies’ and their parents’ wellbeing. With this challenge, we and our Finnish partners are calling for ideas and innovations to create a concept of what the Baby Box of the next generation might look like.”