A team of EIT Digital Master School students has won the EU hackathon #EUvsVirus that was looking for a meaningful project to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. The COVID-19 solution that the team came up with was a 3D printed remote monitoring device for corona patients to measure their vital signs. With this, nurses can safely monitor multiple patients at the same time.
“This was one of our happiest wins”, says team member Peter Lakatos who hopes to graduate this year from the dual degree EIT Digital Master School programme Data Science he is doing at the EIT Digital partner universities Eindhoven University of Technology and KTH and who is also co-founder of SpotYet. “It was one of the biggest competitions we participated in. Because there were no rules set about pre-existing startups or products, we had to compete with companies with already proven solutions. That is why winning this hackathon is so very special.”
The solution is a 3D printed remote monitoring device that can be worn as glasses. With this device, corona-patients can monitor key values themselves. These values which nurses regularly check on corona patients, are the vital signs for body temperature, oxygen saturation and respiratory rates. The measured data is available via a platform to track progress. This also includes real-time alerts when patient values are deteriorating. “Instead of one patient, nurses can now check about hundred patients at the same time form a safe distance using less protected gear”, explains Lakatos in a video about the device.
The winning team exists of five EIT Digital Master School students from different programmes complemented with their friend motion graphic designer Kristóf Nagy. Besides Lakatos, these students include the second year students Márton Elodi who studies Human Computer Interaction and Design at the EIT Digital partner universities Aalto University and KTH and also co-founder of Vern Insurance Technologies and Miklós Knebel Autonomous Systems (Technische Universität Berlin and Aalto University). The other two EIT Digital Master School students are in their first year of study: Levente Mitnyik (Embedded Systems, KTH and Eindhoven University of Technology) and Peter Danos (Visual computing and communication, KTH and Aalto University).
Roberto Prieto, Chief Education Officer of EIT Digital says to be very proud of the Master School students’ team. “This victory illustrates the essence of our EIT Digital Master School of bringing Europe entrepreneurial talent with digital skills that address essential societal problems. They are skilled to use technology to bring solutions that help improve the lives of people. I full-hearted congratulate the team with winning this pan-European hackathon. The team can count on EIT Digital to support the further development of their solution to be able to help COVID-19 patients and improve healthcare in general.“
The EUvsVirus pan-European hackathon was led by the European Innovation Council (EIC) in close collaboration with EU member states in the last weekend of April. The goal of the hackathon was to connect civil society, innovators, partners and investors across Europe to develop innovative solutions for coronavirus-related challenges. Over 20,900 people from across the EU and beyond took part and 2,150 solutions were submitted. The team of the Master School students took part in the biggest category of "Health and Life" competing with about 900 other teams.
Lakatos has a history of winning hackathons teams of EIT Digital Students teams. Last month for example, the team won a special EIT Health award at the Hack the Crisis Hungary hackathon with a pre-model of this device. “We decided to focus now on the whole infrastructure and the software side. And to work on the idea and presentation.”
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Editor's note: In the summer of 2020, the students received 500.000 euro funding from EIT Digital and partners and founded togtehter with these partners the startup Entremo.
