Vaccine app injects Waikato students into cup finals

Waikato University students are solving the world's problems one app at a time.

Team APPortunists is one of two Waikato teams to secure a place at the 2013 New Zealand Microsoft Imagine Cup finals by developing a vaccination/medical records smartphone app designed for third world countries.

The Microsoft Imagine Cup, the world's largest technology competition, invites tertiary students from throughout the world to create software using Microsoft applications to find solutions to real-world problems from innovation, world citizenship, or gaming.

For first-year management students Jess Howse and Michael Watson, the choice of World Citizenship was easy. Having spent time in developing countries like Cambodia and Ghana, the pair was fascinated by the unrestricted access to technology in such poor living conditions.

Michael says the access to WiFi and mobile broadband was also surprising. "The G3 network in Cambodia was a lot better than New Zealand's."

The pair says this revelation opened up a world of opportunities to solve some of the more basic day-to-day problems using communications technology. They came up with the idea for a vaccine app straight away.

The app will keep records of vaccines for an entire family and will notify the user, or other family members via text, when they are due for a booster shot. When the user is connected to WiFi it will also notify them of any updates or new vaccines.

"Microsoft is currently developing disaster relief programmes for developing countries, and we see our apps working in with these very well," says Michael.

The pair teamed up with computing and mathematical science students Haley Littlewood and Keiran Thomson to create a working version of the app to enter the competition. They were picked as one of 100 teams to be interviewed by Microsoft via Skype, before being selected as one of only 25 finalists to make it through to the competition round in Auckland next month.

The team has also been working on a separate app idea for the developed world which keeps a person's medical information at their fingertips. The app would sync with their doctor's records upon visiting their local medical centre. "The app would help identify medical conditions and prescriptions for medication. It would also be useful for providing exemptions at customs when travelling overseas," says Jess.

Jess says they are now working on a way of combining the two apps. "We were advised by Microsoft during our interview that it would be a good idea to submit just one app, so we are working on trying to pull the two together."