STUDENTS behind a mobile application for the visually impaired recently won the top prize in the Microsoft Corp. “Imagine Cup”.
Team Opticode, composed of Lyceum University of the Philippines-Laguna students Christian Lou Cepe, Pearl Raymundo and Rochel Reyes bagged a cash prize of P100,000 (around $2,011.14). Cepe told reporters winning the top prize was far beyond their minds.
The team will also represent the Philippines in the Asean leg of the contest to be held in the Philippines on April 27.
According to Cepe, they used Java for Android in developing the app.
“Since I have a background in Java, I was able to develop the app in less than a month,” Cepe said. “For the second mode, we have added new features in the application to help people suffering from color blindness. We’re so happy that we have a made nice output for the national finals.”
Src Hacks, composed of San Sebastian College’s Carlos Miguel Quintos, Treston International College’s Chadymae Barinan and their project, EPrx, a digital prescription platform to connect doctors to pharmacies to patients placed second and won P70,000 ($1,407.80). According to Barinan, EPrx changes prescription into an electronic form.
“Basically, we wanted to solve the problem of prescription fraud and abuse, and, at the same time, poor handwriting,” she said. “It features a QR code that will be scanned by the pharmacist and get the prescribed medicine by the doctor to their patient.” Barinan said they are targeting doctors for this product when it undergoes commercialization.
Team Epitome, composed of Anna Alexander Nery, Mark Chrsitian Yu and Sohankumar Motwani from the De La Salle College of Saint Benilde-De La Salle University won the third place prize worth P50, 000 for their Project Focus, also a digital assistant for the visually impaired.
Motwani said they envisioned to develop a product that would help the visually-impaired to be able to navigate the indoor environment, to be able identify objects in their surroundings and also to be able to detect distances from collisions to avoid any form of harm.
He added they plan to add more features to the prototype “to make it the near perfect product for the visually impaired”.
“We want to include a Waze-type feature so it can guide a visually impaired individual when inside a building.”
Image credits: Nonie Reyes