Crest competition medals for Mayo schools

A GROUP of Co Mayo students is developing a phone app which will raise the alarm if somebody with a pre-existing medical condition collapses.

The students at St Gerald's College in Castlebar have signed a non-disclosure agreement with software company Sap to develop the device.

There are about 105 conditions where a person could be liable to collapse, ranging from heart disease to epilepsy and diabetes.

The phone app on which the students are working will ask its users to turn off an alert within a set period of time. If that person does not do so, help is called for.

St Gerald's was one of 19 schools to win an award in the first Creativity in Science and Technology (Crest) competition in Ireland.

The Crests are an international award for recognition of the achievements of secondary school children in science, technology, engineering and maths. The awards are hosted by the Galway Education Centre.

St Gerald's was one of six schools nationally to win a silver medal.

The pupils involved in the project have also won a prestigious Lego League challenge and will go on to represent Ireland and Britain in the world finals which will be held in St Louis, Missouri, at the end of April.

Yesterday's awards were presented by President Mary McAleese in St Patrick's College Drumcondra.

The President praised the ingenuity of the students involved and said the calibre of young people present made her hopeful for the future.

No Irish school won a gold medal, which are hard to come by, but the British organisers of Crest said this was not unusual in their first year of competition.

Other silver award winners were St Killian's German School in Dublin, which has developed an electronic patch to remind Alzheimer's patients to take their medicine; Castletroy Community School in Limerick, which worked on an app for diabetes; St Mark's Community College in Tallaght, which developed a valve for use in diabetes; Lackan Enterprise Centre in Lacken, Co Mayo, for its work on an ultrasonic vision system for the blind, and Coláiste na Coiribe in Galway, which has created a waterproof, breathable and comfortable cast.

In addition, there were 13 bronze medal winners. Among the award winners were the McAndrews and Geoghan families from Galway who have developed electric pulses to exercise the muscles while a leg is in a cast.