Snakebite is distinct from other neglected tropical diseases due to its acute and unexpected nature, which requires appropriate and time-critical responses. Matthew Coldiron shares other challenges remote and low-resource regions need to overcome during this time-critical window.

Matthew has a deep wealth of experience working in humanitarian contexts with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). As a member of the judging panel, he provides expertise on what it takes to design a successful clinical trial. We spoke with Matthew about what his top advice would be to teams as they finalise their solutions to the prize.

The key factor areas for developing a solution for snakebite really crossover with the key factors for developing last-mile solutions. The burden of snakebite is felt most in very remote and rural areas where it takes a long time for people to get to a health post. Some people would need to walk for half a day, or even longer, just to get to the most basic level of care. Innovators really need to consider that some people's access to care is very difficult.

To add to this, the facilities where people receive care don’t always have electricity, telecommunications access, or other basic infrastructure. For example, you can’t guarantee that these very peripheral health posts will have cool-chain technology available, so an innovation capable of responding to supply chain management demands would be extremely important. Innovators need to carefully consider the available resources and design their solutions accordingly for these low-resource settings.

The final factor I would urge entrants to consider would be simplicity. I wish there was a single-dose pill-in-a-pocket cure for snakebites, because in some of these remote settings, even having an IV setup or oxygen tank is a big ask. Solutions need to be simple to successfully work with the basic infrastructure available.

Overall, the key recommendations I would share with innovators are (1) remaining conscious of what it means to be remote, (2) the challenges of supplying remote health facilities, and (3) understanding the limitations these health facilities face.

It's a real challenge designing research projects, particularly in remote areas, often because the groups with whom a study is conducted may have had very limited interaction with medical research communities. In these cases, building true community engagement is challenging and can result in some trials being tokenistic "tick-box" exercises that fail to achieve any real meaningful participation or insights.

That said, snakebite in particular does offer us a key opportunity for community engagement. Given the heavy burden of snakebite and the frequency of envenoming in the most remote populations, this field is fertile ground for researchers to engage with these communities. Researchers have a real opportunity to actively involve affected communities in designing studies and evaluating new tools, approaches or treatments.

Closing the loop on the research results is another issue. A key weakness we see in many places is that even when community engagement is done properly, there's no feedback loop after the study is complete to explain “this is what's happened” or “this is how we can ensure access to this new approach that we've tried”. It is very difficult to take a study and do something meaningful with it. My advice to innovators as they evaluate new approaches is to adequately resource that area of their project.

For starters, I would welcome people from outside the snakebite field, because we've been using the same technology to deal with snakebites and envenoming for the last 150 years, and we need to consider how to do things differently. It's great that the prize will bring in some fresh blood and some different ideas.

The advice to someone new to snakebite is that neglected tropical diseases are diseases of neglected populations. The people who suffer from snakebite, for a range of systemic, economic and logistical issues, don't have the capacity to buy their own treatment. Antivenom is incredibly expensive to produce, purchase, and distribute due to complex supply chains. $200 per course of antivenom is simply unaffordable for many people bitten by a venomous snake. The majority of people lack the agency to deal with their problems themselves.

In this sense, it's great to have fresh sets of eyes and fresh ideas about non-traditional treatments and non-traditional ways to seek care for a snakebite. Decades of experience using current snakebite solutions have shown that they are neither scalable nor affordable for those most in need.

Across human history and across different cultures, there is this shared innate fear of snakes. There's this shared human experience with snakes that speaks to people, but so far we've not been able to fix the snakebite problem.

There is no single solution to snakebite in the places where it's the biggest problem. My hope is that this prize is “the carrot on the stick”, welcoming in people who want to solve complicated problems. Snakebite is a complicated problem; it is a science problem, it's a social sciences problem, it's a supply chain problem, it's a global financing problem, and it's a funding problem. Reducing snakebite mortality and morbidity will require creative thinkers. Using a prize to inspire people who may be approaching it from a different perspective outside the snakebite world is great, because we need creative solutions to fix the snakebite problem.

I think this prize has a much broader reach. It has the potential to attract people from a much wider range of backgrounds and areas of expertise. You don't have to be a clinician or a traditional snakebite researcher; you might be a sociologist or come from a completely different field.

Traditional research grants are often quite structured. They start with a specific research question and follow well-established methodologies. This prize is different because it creates space for innovative ideas that might challenge the way we currently think about snakebite.

If you have an idea that could make a real difference, this prize provides an opportunity to explore it, even if it doesn't fit within the boundaries of a traditional research grant. That innovation might change how we diagnose and treat snakebite, but it could also improve public health, strengthen health systems or transform the way care is delivered.

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Throughout our Q&A with Matthew, one point was clear: snakebite is a deeply complex, multi-dimensional challenge that spans medicine, social science, supply chain logistics, and global finance. Addressing snakebite will require consideration for the realities of the "last mile", where high-burden areas face half-day journeys to remote health posts that lack basic electricity, cold-chain storage, or even oxygen. Matthew emphasised that current antivenom solutions would bankrupt the many impacted by snakebite. For innovators entering the field, his advice is to remain conscious of remote infrastructure constraints, embrace simplicity in solution design, and leverage fresh perspectives to solve a problem that has relied on 150-year-old technology.

If you have a creative solution that could help overcome the logistical, clinical, or community challenges of snakebite envenoming, we encourage you to turn that idea into reality. Build on real-world understanding, collaborate across disciplines, and apply to the Wellcome Snakebite Innovation Prize before 16 September 2026.