A mobile-based medical application dubbed RemD (Remote Doctor) emerged as the winner of the Game of Learners (GOL) competition sponsored by Microsoft’s Africa Development Center (ADC). The mobile application was developed by five students drawn from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Multimedia University of Kenya, Strathmore University and Mt. Kenya University.
The Game of Learners hackathon was to demonstrate the application of technology in developing e-health systems. That will enable patients to access normal medical services remotely.
Project RemD app was developed by five students namely Daniel Katungi (Mt. Kenya University), Sandra Makena (Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Joshua Melita (Strathmore University), Cyndrella Wafula of Multimedia University and led by Microsoft Student Ambassador Joshua Ndemenge (Dedan Kimathi University)
RemD uses technology to avail a set of tools and services that aim to bring health care services to a user or an organization. Through the app, a user requests for consultation services selecting whether they would like consultation with either a general physician, a psychiatrist, or a paediatrician. They then receive a message from the bot to begin triage where all the symptoms are recorded. After the triage, the bot sends all the information recorded to the doctor on the App. The doctor continues the conversation with a user via SMS. If the doctor deems it necessary, an in-person appointment can be set up.
“Any user seeking medical services can access our services through the mobile app or the USSD App. While the doctor on the other end can interact with these users using the windows app,” explains the RemD team leader, Joshua Ndemenge.
The African Development Center Managing Director Jack Ngare congratulated all the 25 participating students noting that some of the projects presented had big potential for commercialisation and Microsoft was willing to support them achieve that dream.
Apart from RemD, the other projects submitted include Tribore, MediChap, Mizizi and Motion, all showcasing various solutions to avail healthcare solutions via different technology platforms.
“While access to healthcare has been a key concern in Africa for ages, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the impetus to discover new technology solutions that will enable health providers handle an influx of people who get sick. It is encouraging to see the young generation and innovators harnessing the technology they have access to in developing solutions for the industry,” said Jack Ngare, the Africa Development Center Managing Director at the end of the competition.
He added, “We are keen at growing your skills and I will really be proud to see some of you that has participated in the Game of Learners joining one of the engineering teams at Microsoft.”
In addition, Microsoft Research is running a programme called HealthNext that seeks to discover some of the new sustainable methods of offering healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa and India and as such would be following up on some of the projects submitted to see how they can be scaled to the next level, Ngare said.
The Game of Learners hackathon, which kicked off in June, is aimed to empower the students to develop impactful solutions that can help address some of Africa’s and the world’s challenges. It is structured as a 5-week virtual hackathon comprised of weekly sprints where, at the end of the 5th week, all participating teams submit their final projects for judging. There were volunteers from ADC and Microsoft Global Sales and Marketing departments to train, coach the students throughout the 5-week engagement and judge each team’s final project submission.
To ensure that all participants had required tools to participate, every participant received:
Solar panel with battery and inverter
MiFi device loaded with data bundles
LinkedIn Learning vouchers
Azure Fundamentals exam vouchers
DevOps and agile practices training
1-year Azure credits
Digital certificate and digital badge for participation
Besides having the winning team featured on the ADC site along with announcements on social media, each standing member of the winning team will be rewarded with:
Additional 1-year Azure credits
Additional 1-year LinkedIn Learning vouchers
Digital certificate and digital badge for winning
1:1 mentorship from preferred Microsoft professionals
“We are so keen on enabling the next generation of great engineers from Africa and innovators that will not only benefit Microsoft, but the entire ecosystem as well,” Ngare said.
The hackathon organized by BeMyApp sought to unearth new innovations in remote work during this Covid-19 pandemic era. Inviting ideas from individuals and organizations across the Middle East and Africa region.
Easy Gas, an IoT solution emerged winners of the hackathon. Winning the 4000 USD first place price. Their IoT solution monitors gas levels, detects leakages and connects owners to vendors for refills and fixes.
HR SAM Remote Interview Specialist and Wazabi projects tied in second and third place. Projects Speechio and Cubicle came in fourth and fifth place respectively.
Business Group Manager Microsoft Azure Middle East and Africa, Julien Bertin announced the winners of the hackathon virtually. “Congratulations to the winning team and all the hackathon participants,” Julien shares. He notes it was a very difficult selection for the judges.
Remote productivity is a huge challenge and opportunity for the world these days. Developers are essential to build the right solutions to cater to our new reality. Thank you for contributing your energy and creativity to help a better work environment for developers. We are looking forward to seeing you in our next event.
BeMyApp and Microsoft present an online hackathon centered around remote work. Dubbed the Remote Resilience Online Hackathon. The competition let’s you showcase your remote work idea using Microsoft technology.
The competition invites startups, individuals and teams with ideas around and not limited to Remote Collaboration & Productivity, Remote Secure Access Management, Remote Rapid Business Process & Customer Relationship Management and Remote Distributed Team Programming to apply.
Registration and submission of ideas starts from 14th May to 23rd June. On the 29th of June 2020, five winners will then be announced. There is no limit in the number of ideas you can submit. But you can only have one registration per innovation, project or idea.
Additionally, Microsoft will also host a webinar on May 28th. To announce resources and give insights on technologies that can help you build your prototypes.
The hackathon event is organized by BeMyApp and sponsored by Microsoft.
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Microsoft invited female developers in Kenya and Nigeria to participate in the Microsoft LEAP Hackathon 2019 event. An initiative of the newly launched Microsoft Africa Development center. The all-female event seeks to strengthen the place of women in technology. A four day program combining traditional classroom learning with hands on projects.
In Nigeria 30 female developers were selected from about 170 who successfully applied to participate in the event. Nelly Tadi from Abuja state was one of the 30 selected female developers. She shares with us her experience of the Microsoft LEAP Hackathon. For Nelly it was a learning curve. Learning new technologies and tools, practicing how to use them and working with a team.
“I got a forwarded message from a friend on WhatsApp and actually ignored it at first. I later went back to it, clicked on the link and started to fill the form on my phone.” She mentions almost giving up as there was a quiz section in the form where she had to write code and the phone wouldn’t allow. She however had the urge to continue because she found the quiz challenging, intriguing and wanted to solve it. “So I picked up my laptop, entered the link and started the quiz again.”
“I was super excited to be selected. I felt honored. I mean it was a Microsoft event with free accommodation and feeding. It felt important.”
Learning
“Having once participated in a hackathon event in school – Bingham University – I thought it was going to be coding throughout. We had trainings for the first two days and then the Hackathon for the remaining two days of the event. To be honest before this I had never heard about Azure, Microsoft teams and DevOps.”
Participants were taken through
writing maintainable and testable code. Learning about DevOps, Azure,
machine learning studio, virtual machines, Azure AI and other Microsoft
technologies and tools.
“The mentors were really patient with us. Going over the same thing again and again just to ensure that we were learning. The organizers, mentors were all so friendly and easy going. The atmosphere there was enough to give anybody the confidence to ask questions and learn. We hosted our web app on azure and also did a machine learning project on it with the free credit given to us. So yeah, it wasn’t just about the training, it was great because i actually got to practically use these tools.”
Hacking with Team 5X at the Microsoft LEAP Hackathon
During the hackathon Nelly Tadi was put in Team 5X. A team that saw her becoming friends with Busola Okeowo, Catherine John, Mary Olohitare Belo and Hope Oluwalolope. Learning the valuable lesson of working in a team. Nelly says “I’m so glad we learnt to understand ourselves. If not i’m quite sure we wouldn’t have been able to come up with a good project not to talk more of winning. I was really excited about winning.”
Nelly’s Team 5X won the Microsoft
LEAP Hackathon with a solution they named AGRIFY. A platform that connects buyers, sellers and transporters of good and
quality farm produce.
“We created a solution based on a real life problem. Our idea was a product called AGRIFY. Agrify is a platform to connect buyers and sellers of farm produce and also ensure delivery of good quality farm products. We used machine learning to determine quality of farm produce and built the web application with PHP Laravel. During the training we were taught how to host web apps on azure so we implemented that knowledge by hosting our demo app on https://agrify.azurewebsites.net.
Nelly Tadi lives in Abuja and is the founder of Why Code. An organization training young people in different aspects of IT. She shares “we are currently working on introducing coding clubs to schools, running summer schools and other training events. I intend to continue to pursue this dream and also keep learning more about programming and improving my skills.”
Microsoft Invites Female Developers to participate in the Microsoft LEAP Hackathon 2019. The LEAP Program is a benefit of the recently announced Africa Development Centres in Lagos and Nairobi, Microsoft says. It is a 16 weeks Software Engineering Program which focuses on strengthening the place of women in technology. Combining traditional class room learning with hands on projects in a real-world development experience.
Microsoft is inviting lady developers to participate in the inaugural LEAP hackathon event. There will be two events scheduled to take place in Kenya and Nigeria. At the Radisson Blu, Upper Hill in Nairobi on the 17th to the 21st of June. And at the Microsoft Office, Civic Tower in Lagos, Nigeria.
The LEAP Engineering Acceleration Program provides a new approach to talent sourcing. Leveraging modern models and avenues to find passionate and capable talent among women who are from a non-traditional ICT background or those returning to the workplace environment after a while.
Visit the Microsoft LEAP Hackathon 2019 registration page to register. By providing personal details and answering a few questions.
