ABUAD Students Emerge Victors Of Microsoft Imagine Cup
Four students of the Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) have won Africa’s ticket to the Imagine Cup competition organised by Microsoft Incorporation. They achieved this feat with their Asthmavisor, a device for managing asthma effectively particularly in children.
The quartet that placed the five year-old institution on the global map, Adeyemo Oluwaseun, Raymond Obinaju, Sobola Timilehin, and Kevin Ahwin, are studying Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering.
They defeated contingents from across other African countries including Burkina Faso, South Africa, Uganda, Egypt, Angola, Algeria and Morocco as well as Tunisia to qualify for the grand finale which comes up at the Microsoft Headquarters in Seattle, United States next month.
The team christened, Team Lifewatch, identified a major health problem and proffered a novel solution using available technology.
AsthmaVisor Solution consists of a mobile application operating with a wearable device, which monitors asthmatic patients’ health status, ensuring that they stay safe and well informed of their environment.
The team designed the device to be a cost-effective and efficient way of supervising asthmatic patients, especially children.
It helps patients to be more conscious of their environment while also serving as a reminder of their physicians’ recommendations. The software also provides an automatic alert, which is triggered by changes in environmental condition as detected by the sensors in the device. AsthmaVisor further helps the patient alert a selected list of emergency contacts in the event of crisis.
This achievement is coming nine months after Mr Emmanuel Adegbite, a 300-Level student in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences of ABUAD, wrote a research paper on the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) that ravaged Nigeria and parts of West Africa last year. Adegbite’s paper titled: “Therapeutic measures against the current virulent endemicity of Ebola Virus”, was published in the October edition of the Journal of Medicine and Clinical Trials, a Nigerian-based International Science Journal.
Imagine Cup is a global student technology programme and competition that provides opportunities for students across all disciplines to team up and use their creativity, passion and knowledge of technology to create applications, games and integrates solutions that can change the way people live, work and play.
