Imagine Cup Design for Development Award - Tonight's the Night!
The Imagine Cup finalists for the Unlimited Potential Design for Development Award competed in Cairo yesterday. Early feedback suggests that the judges were deeply impressed by all of the creative thinking and passion that went in to the projects, designed to help solve one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Below you will find a quick overview of the teams that are anxiously awaiting tonight’s Imagine Cup winners announcement.
Team Name: Unique Studio, China
MDG: Reduce Child Mortality
Challenge : In rural clinics, childhood pneumonia can be difficult to diagnoseboth due to the lack of qualified physicians, as well as itssemblance to the common cold.
Solution: CoDoc, allows for doctors to remotely diagnose childhoodpneumonia using an embedded device which consists of a stethoscope connected to a basic mobile phone. Using the CoDoc embedded device, rural doctors can send auscultation data from patients to remote experts who can make diagnosis and treatment recommendations via an online application.
Team Name: development++, Uganda
MDG: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Challenge: Currently farmers face a variety of challenges to their crop harvests such as unpredictable weather, low yielding crop varieties, and a dearth of quality agricultural advice. In addition, limited access to external markets and prevailing market prices prevents farmers from attaining the highest price for their crops.
Solution: e-Farmer, allows for traders and farmers to buy and sell crops through a SMS based auctioning system. In addition to the agricultural e-marketplace, the e-Farmer system allows for farmers to query weather forecasts, market information, and seek expert advice on day-to-day agricultural questions via SMS.
Team Name: COSMIC, Malaysia
MDG: Reduce Child Mortality
Challenge: Paper-based vaccination records and in-person visits to remind mothers about missed vaccinations is a costly and ineffectivesystem which results in a high number of vaccination defaulters.
Solution: Virtual Health Connect, a web based immunization registry which allows for local health workers, doctors, and nurses to manage immunization records and send vaccination reminders to patients via SMS. Along with the reminder service and records management, the Virtual Health Connect system will inform patients of free vaccination campaigns, provide them with educational content about immunizations and allow them to retrieve their immunization records via SMS.
Team: Capricorn, Malaysia
MDG: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Challenge: Existing communication channels between agricultural cooperativesand farmers rely heavily on loud-speaker announcementsand word-of-mouth. As a result, communication ofimportant information between the two parties is costly anddoes not always reach the intended recipients in time.
Solution: GreenEve2Peace, an online and offline application thatallows for agricultural cooperatives to broadcast agricultural information and alerts to farmers via SMS. In addition to SMS broadcasts of weather forecasts as well as harvesting and seeding schedules, the GreenEve2Peace system allows farmers to report crop diseases and insect attacks via SMS to the agricultural cooperative so that broader alerts can be issued to nearby farmers.
Team Name: pedjoeang, Indonesia
MDG: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
Challenge: Current Tuberculosis (TB) treatments require patients to takea rigorous 6 month course of treatment in which patients mayexperience unnerving side-effects.
Solution: La Tansa, a Tuberculosis information portal and monitoringsystem which sends TB patients medication and treatment reminders as well as disease information all via SMS. In addition to reminders, the La Tansa system allows for patients to receive answers to questions about everyday TB-related problems via SMS.