A team of Irish students competed with the best at the Imagine Cup, Microsoft’s version of the Olympics for students with a talent for technology

WHEN ATHLETES dream, they dream of the Olympics. When computer science students, brimming with ideas and an idealistic view of changing the world, need a place to flex their frontal cortexes, they can find it at the Imagine Cup.

Now in its 10th year, the Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s version of the Olympics for students with a talent for the technological. The cup dares students to imagine that they make a difference.

Using Microsoft technologies, students are invited to design software and create apps that can change the world for the better. This year, the Imagine Cup was hosted in Sydney, Australia, a country where many have come to try and carve out a future for themselves and a fitting choice for the future Bill Gateses to showcase their ideas.

The Imagine Cup is everything it sounds like it should be: it’s imagination run riot. Students gather in groups around computer screens, brandishing phones and using interactive games to showcase their projects.

The philanthropic nature of the competition filtered into the various ideas each team displayed. Students were given free rein to indulge their ideals and make their world a better place, with the help of state-of- the-art technology.

The winning team, Quadsquad from Ukraine, used specially designed sensory gloves to transmit sign language to a smartphone, which can then play the sounds of the signs – essentially talking for the signer.

From the US, the Arizona State University team had a unique solution to food shortages in cities. Their application, FlashFood, made use of leftover food from restaurants with an easy-to-use messaging service.

With a few clicks of a smartphone, a restaurant can send out an alert saying how much food it has to give away at the end of the night. This alert is then sent to community organisations which can pick up the food and distribute it to those in need.

“Restaurants who use this service can use the FlashFood seal of approval on menus and merchandise,” explains Eric Lehnhardt explained.

The Australian team, from the University of Melbourne, had aspirations to help children with pneumonia in developing countries.

Using a Windows phone application, they built a digital stethoscope accessory which transmits clinical data and breath sounds to the Windows Azure cloud platform.

The result is StethoCloud, an application which automates the diagnosis of pneumonia, something that is notoriously difficult to do. Pneumonia leads to the deaths of two million children every year.

During the showcase, various mobile devices moved around the room. One in particular caught the eye as a Portuguese student, using a wheelchair, was followed around by a mobile shopping cart.

The wi-Go, as it was named by the students from Universidade da Beira Interior, uses Microsoft’s Kinect technology to follow a person around while carrying their items in a trolley. The wi-Go is designed for people in wheelchairs or with mobility issues to make carrying things easier.

The students say their idea is not just intended for shopping, but could be used in situations such as travelling through airports or carrying bags and books in schools and universities.

In the other corner of the room, the finalists from the Kinect fun labs challenge appeared to be having more fun than anyone else. The Polish team crowded around their fellow student as he bounced on a yoga ball, arms raising in the air, all the while controlling the actions of an animated dragon on screen.

The team, from Adam Mickiewicz University, have created an interactive game called Reh the Dragon, which is designed to help children do physiotherapy exercises.

“The repetitive exercises can seem really boring to children,” says team mentor, Marek Banaszak.

“To play this game they have to repeatedly bounce on an exercise ball and do arm movements, but all the while they are helping a dragon on screen navigate along a path with obstacles. It makes it more fun and interesting for them.”

The team from Ireland designed an application to help MS patients track and manage their daily symptoms and medication, which made it into the final 20 entries.

The NUI Maynooth students – Donal O’Sullivan (22), Cosmin Siclovan (22) and Marie Farrell (21) – were talking before a lecture in February when they came up with their eureka moment.

Inspired by the idea of competing in the Imagine Cup, they decided they wanted to help Farrell manage her multiple sclerosis symptoms more effectively.

Farrell was diagnosed with MS last year, but took a unique approach to her condition.

“I’m not just an MS patient, I’m a computer science student. When I’m faced with a problem, I did what we were taught to do, we built a solution. Our solution is docTek.”

Like most patients with MS, Farrell was handed a paperback journal in which to record her daily symptoms and to keep track of the medication she was taking. However, as she points out, it wasn’t conducive to the lifestyle of an active student.

“I have to remember to take my medicine, I have to remember to write down that I took my medicine and I have to remember any symptoms, but this diary doesn’t fit in my handbag. I’m not going to carry this around with me everywhere that I go,” she says.

From a doctor’s point of view, she felt the diary didn’t give an accurate overview of a patient’s symptoms. “Assuming that I did keep it, assuming that I wrote everything, I would visit my doctor once a year for a 15-minute consultation,.

“There is absolutely no way that you can go through an entire year’s worth of symptoms in 15 minutes. It’s too much paperwork and he just doesn’t have enough time.”

The team decided the best solution was to go with a smartphone application: smartphones are light, mobile and already a part of Farrell’s daily routine.

“We had a week off from lectures and instead of going out, we came into the lab from morning until night every day and we began researching a design for the solution,” says O’Sullivan.

The team contacted MS Ireland which put them in touch with Prof Niall Tubridy, a consultant neurologist at St Vincent’s hospital, who suggested they link up their patient application idea with one for the medical professional.

The resulting application, docTek, has two parts: a patient’s app and a doctor’s app.

The patient’s application on a Windows phone has two functions – a symptoms log and medicine log. The team taught themselves how to create applications using Microsoft technology, with use of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

A calendar then presents the data the patient has stored in a typical smartphone manner. This data can be stored on the Azure cloud platform, which can then be transmitted to the doctor.

The students plan to keep the basic app free for the patient, with a one-off fee if they choose to link with a medical professional. The medical professional is expected to pay a monthly fee to get access to patient’s data, but can also get a basic version for free.

“The MS Society and docTek have the same goal – we both want to help people manage multiple sclerosis,” Siclovan says. “Our success is their success and we will recognise this. We will give 40 per cent of all the net profits to sustain these organisations.”

The team plans to release the product to the market in September and then expand to other platforms. They will work with MS societies in other countries and then focus on increasing the user base to a point where data can be used for non-profit and medical research for clinical trials.

Beyond that, the students plan to modify docTek to work for Parkinson’s disease, migraines and motor neurone disease.

“I’m using docTek, it has changed my life,” says Farrell. “It can change the lives of millions.”