The team of the University of Pécs won an international innovation bronze medal with a virtual pet that helps children with diabetes. The team of four Brazilian students studying in the city achieved the excellent result representing the Medical School Institute of Transdisciplinary Discoveries (ITD) - UP reported.
Hackathon is a new and extremely popular type of competition in academic-scientific circles. Participants need to find an operational digital solution to a given problem in a short time.
It usually takes a day to get from the idea through design and development to a working, presentable prototype that requires very active, intensive work.
The organiser of the health-focused hackathon was the pan-European health innovation and research organisation called EIT Health. The region is represented by UP ITD in a group bringing together 150 universities, research institutes and companies. Accordingly, the institute could hold the first health idea competition of the University of Pécs, the winner of which qualified for the European finals.
The issue of childhood diabetes, the treatment of which has many difficulties and thus leaves a wide scope for innovative thinking, has been chosen as the central theme. Dozens of teams - Hungarian and foreign students - entered the competition, and the jury finally chose the idea of four Brazilian students as the best one. They could qualify for the continental finals where, achieving a major success, they finished in the third place.
In addition to the idea, the team has also put together a business plan that may be partially or wholly realised in the future.
“We are very proud of this result. The UP ITD was established with the aim of connecting researchers from different disciplines, thus stimulating innovation and accelerating the flow of research results into the economy. Diagotchi modelled all of this on a small scale, from scientific cooperation to putting the idea into a marketable form” - said Dr. Attila Sík, head of UP ITD.