By Noimot Olayiwola
A number of teams, who took part at the recently concluded Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 at St Petersburg in Russia, demonstrated the power of student innovation by attempting to solve some of the world’s healthcare problems via the use of technology and computer games.
Among the bright young minds from universities and institutions of learning from across 71 countries, who presented to judges their projects that could become potential ideas for solving healthcare issues through the use of technologies were Uganda’s team Code 8 and Taiwan’s OmniHearing Solution, who were awarded Women Empowerment awards, in partnership with the United Nations Women, under the competition’s World Citizenship category.
Code 8’s Matibabu won first prize of $12,000 while team OmniHearing Solution’s OmniHearing solution won $8,000 in second place.
By connecting a custom piece of hardware called a matiscope to a portable device — a Windows phone application, Matibabu can diagnose malaria without requiring a blood sample, the team claimed. They explained that the user is able to diagnose and know their malaria status in the shortest time possible. The results are sent to the user’s skydrive for medical record keeping and sharing with their personal doctors.
Team member Gitta Brian said the team were inspired by the conditions he faced saying: “I suffered from malaria and brusella before the competition and was subjected to a number of prickings to diagnose over and over again,” he said adding that the experience lead the team to work towards a solution that can help diagnose malaria early, and efficiently to save lives, time and money.
“While treatment may be available, the costly invasive diagnosis hinders implementation. With this solution — Matibabu, we are able to diagnose malaria in its early stages, which will help reduce malaria by more than 75% in 2015 as by World Health Organisation,” another team member Simon Fred Lubambo said.
The Omni-Hearing Solution team explained that their project is an app-centric solution that ensures anyone full hearing ability.
“The solution is three-fold: it’s a smartphone app to replace a traditional hearing aid; a cloud service to identify your potential hearing problem; and a sound processing technology to enhance the quality of all forms of vocal communication,” a team member said.
The team claimed that traditional hearing aids only amplify sounds by different bands of frequencies, which results in a very limited speech intelligibility of the users because they cannot hear sounds of high frequencies.
“To tackle the problem, we adopt a unique audio signal processing technology in real-time to allow those with hearing problems to hear high frequency sounds while minimising the distortion of sounds in the process. As a result, users can enjoy the best possible sound performance and a better speech intelligibility. Plus, aided with our online cloud services, all settings can be set at home with a few taps on the phone,” one of the team members said.
“Before taking on this project, we had no idea that hearing loss is such a serious problem in the world. A quarter of million babies are born with hearing problem each year, and more than 30% of the rest three quarters that are lucky enough to have been born with healthy ears, will eventually face some degree of hearing loss as they age. New technologies are developed everyday to help improve the lives of the physically challenged and the elderly. Yet while people with myopia or presbyopia can easily get a pair of glasses from a nearby K-mart, there hasn’t been a simple and low-cost way for the hearing impaired to conquer their difficulties.
“Through working on this project, we have learned that there is a part of the world that is in desperate need of something amazing to happen so they can change for the better. As our project develops, we find that we could be the amazing thing that happens. So, here we are,” the team member added.
Though many of the teams did not win a prize at the event, their projects were equally creative. One of the teams is Pathfinder from India, which showcased a pill box called Swasthya Sanjivani.
“Our project ‘Swasthya Sanjivani’ is an affordable, quick and atomised blood and urine testing system with immediate confirmatory results covering disease such as anaemia, diabetes, jaundice and renal damage. The fully digital testing is done under the supervision of doctors along with an electronic pill box to remind patients about medicine and appointment schedule,” team mentor Prashant Gupta told Gulf Times.
According to him, ‘Swasthya’ is an Hindi word meaning ‘health’ and ‘Sanjivani’ is a magical drug, closely related to Indian mythology, that is believed to put life back into dead people.
He explained that it took the group almost six months of continuous hard work, sometimes up to 22 hours a day, to build the project.
“We were inspired to develop the pill box after reading a newspaper article titled: ‘One billion people lack access to basic healthcare’. It really shook us up … so we went to the villages, spoke to people as well as their leaders, and learned that health conditions were extremely bad,” Gupta said adding: “We got to know that several diseases are identified by colour changing tests and hence Swasthya Sanjivani was born.”
Gupta, who described their participation as an ‘honour of a lifetime’, said it felt great to represent their country at such a big event, competing with many great ideas. Looking into the future, he mentioned that the team is planning to add some features to the kit in order to increase the spectrum of diseases that they are covering presently.
“Also, we are planning to add cloud connectivity to the pill box aside working on personalised disease confirming methods,” he added.
Team Devastators from Jordan, comprising five high school students of Jubilee School, Amman, was inspired to create their project called — Smart Tops — in order to improve the healthcare of the elderly.
The technology is embedded into a jacket that was designed to help people, especially the elderly, with proper posture to avoid back pain and fatigue as well as detect and send vital signs about their health condition to the care-givers. The group has created an app making use of Windows Phone 8 that detects the condition of the jacket wearer and sends SMS to caregiver or hospitals.
“We have created a technology embedded in a jacket, which will monitor the health of the elderly and send signals to whoever is responsible for their care, either at home or at the hospital,” team mentor Osama Turki explained.
He claimned that the jacket has the potential to measure body temperature, heart rate and the level of smoke or gas exposure.
“The jacket uses photo sensor that can monitor and check the wearer’s sitting position and in case of emergency, it sends signal to the apps on a Windows 8 Phone, via a panic button, which has already being programmed to the jacket, so that the caregiver can know that the patient is in danger,” said Turki adding: “The phone can also send signals or SMS to the hospital via radio frequency.”
Team LifeSaver, comprising students from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (Lautech) and Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), both in Nigeria, showcased ‘CardioLife’— a solution designed to tackle heart health by monitoring heart rate via the Windows Phone. The solution also provides a rehabilitation programme for stroke patients using Microsoft Kinect.
“We observed that a good number of people in Nigeria have heart-related diseases due to many reasons and many end up having stroke or heart attack because majority is not aware of their symptoms, which usually occur very gradually. So, we decided to come up with a solution that will make it easy for people to monitor their heart rate by creating a software that will send vital signs to the hospital for analysis,” LifeSaver mentor Dr Tayo Arulogun explained.
He maintained that the software, specifically created for physiotherapists for easier assessment of their patients, can also make audible alert to doctor or people around the patient.
“In the event of a heart attack, cardiovascular disease or stroke, the patient can be rescued on time via the app. Also in physiotherapy exercise, which is usually tiring for the patient because the therapist has to make some physical measurements and calculations to monitor the patient and check where to apply the therapy, the software, through Kinect sensor, can allow this to be done remotely without having to carry or move the patient to different positions,” he claimed.
The software can also be used to monitor people with facial palsy during their physio exercise, he added.
Among other projects focusing on health included, technology for preventing hearing loss; teaching tool for doctors about insulin therapy for diabetes mellitus; solutions for autistic children, therapists and parents; solution to store medical record on an individual’s wristband for easy access; Kinect-based game for children with cystic fibrosis; coping with the complex requirements of metabolic syndromes and technology to assist epileptic children.
OmniHearing Solution members in a file photograph.
