Microsoft Imagine Cup 2011
Check out these health oriented Microsoft Imagine Cup finalists! Similar to Health 2.0′s own Developer Challenge, the Imagine Cup is a year long competition focused on promoting innovative technological solutions to social problems. We are very pleased to see mobile health devices take center stage as this year’s event nears the final round of judging.
Team Care Everyone from China, submitted software “to provide a convenient and efficient method for physically disabled people to get access to information without barriers.” The software is a combination of image and speech recognition technologies to help disabled people surf on-line, communicate with others and play games.
Team LifeLens from the United States, submitted an application allowing medical professionals to diagnose malaria by taking a cellphone photo. The prototype is a Samsung Focus with a special microscopic lens attached to the camera phone which takes a picture of a blood sample, processes the data to determine if malaria parasites are present, calculates how much malaria is in the sample, and then draws a red box around the clusters of malaria, notifying how many were found. The application also aggregates historical, whether and current case reports on a Bing Map - helping aid workers make projections about potential outbreaks. Read the full story at in Mobileda.
Team Hex-Pistols from the United Arab Emirates, created a pre-natal mobile device named momEcare, that helps provide medical assistance to women without access to a hospital. The momEcare system has three parts: the mobile app, the server side at the U.N. and a website. Governments and local organizations will be able to order devices on the website per village. This is a departure from most mobile device solutions that try to put a device in the hand of each user (which is often a financially unrealistic option). Read the full story at GOOD
Health 2.0 Developer Challenges