The focus on young entrepreneurship seems to be becoming all the rage now, with young people all over Ireland starting to get in on the start-up vibe.
For instance, we have kids as young as nine who are starting to learn how to code via the CoderDojos. And this year, 550 projects made it to the finals of the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The overall winners were Dublin students Eric Doyle and Mark Kelly, who developed an algorithm to help satellites and probes stay on the right flight path when in space.
Then we had the FIRST LEGO League Challenge back in January when a Galway team, whose members ranged in age from nine to 14, scooped the overall prize for its smartphone app that focused on food safety.
And, as for the area of cloud computing, Microsoft is aiming to get young people thinking about how they can come up with their own cloud innovations via its global Imagine Cup student technology competitions.
Just last week, a trio of students from NUI Maynooth won the overall Irish finals of the 2012 Microsoft Imagine Cup. The three students won for their cloud-based doctor patient system that’s aiming to make it easier for doctors to monitor patient conditions in real-time.
The NUI Maynooth students are Marie Farrell, who is studying computer science and maths at the university; Cosmin Siclovan, a computer science and software engineering student; and Dónal O’Sullivan, who is studying astrophysics.
The trio managed to edge past more than 600 other students to win in the finals. They will now be heading to compete at the global Imagine Cup finals this July in Sydney, Australia.
A smart idea: docTek Systems
According to O’Sullivan, the idea for the cloud-based system, incidentally called docTek Systems, was first spawned last year.
“The original idea came about when Marie was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) last summer. We wanted to fuse technology with medicine,” he explains.
He said the aim of the app will be to help people record their symptoms in real-time, but he is keen to stress that the app is not a diagnostic tool.
“We’ve started off with a prototype system for MS, but we see the scope to branch out from this framework for the long-term monitoring of other diseases, such as diabetes, epilepsy and asthma.”
O’Sullivan says NUI Maynooth has given the team members an internship so they can work on their technology in its computer science department once they finish their college exams. This is to allow the trio to fine-tune their product and carry out more market research before the global finals in July.
“We want to come up with an end product before the finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup. We’ll be basing the app around what doctors and what patients want. We’re just the coders, the programmers and the developers,” he adds.
O’Sullivan says that when the product becomes available it will work on the Windows Platform, as well as Azure, and will be free for patients.
“As a patient keeps track of their symptoms, their doctor will be able to see their progress in real-time,” he explains, noting that the mentoring from Microsoft has been invaluable.
And what about the Irish team from IT Sligo that won in the global finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup in 2011? The group, known as ‘Team Hermes’, won in the software design category at the time. Students Matthew Padden, Calum Cawley, Aíne Conaghan and James McNamara won for their software to help prevent vehicle crashes.
