A team of three Makerere University students has won the Imagine Cup 2013 (Women’s Empowerment Award) for Africa with their Windows phone application that diagnoses malaria without pricking the body to draw a blood sample.
Brian Gitta, Joshua Businge and Simon Lubambo (PICTURE 1-3 left to right) designed “Matibabu” which works by connecting a custom piece of hardware (matiscope) to the windows phone enabling the user to diagnose and know their malaria status in the shortest time possible. The results are sent to the user’s skydrive for medical record keeping and sharing with their personal doctors. Their win makes the $12,000 richer.
87 students from 71 countries competed in the three major categories of Innovation, Games and World Citizenship as well as some other three product challenges. Uganda was the only African country to win anything from the competition.
Malaria remains a number one killer in Africa and early diagnosis is seen as one of the effective ways to keep the disease on a leash.