Pakistani Start-up Qualifies for Semi-finals in Microsoft Contest
By Usman Hanif
Seattle: A Pakistan-based start-up, Fe Amaan, has managed to qualify for semi-finals in the Microsoft Imagine Cup start-up contest.
The Imagine Cup Awards is a special category that the Microsoft team has introduced this year in lieu of quarter-finals for the categories of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality.
The main contest started on Tuesday and Fe Amaan also participated in that contest.
The start-up offers health solutions to pregnant women and has been selected from among six teams in the category of Artificial Intelligence.
The winning team in this category will receive $15,000 cash prize and a $30,000 Azure grant. Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft that helps test, deploy and manage applications and services globally.
Judges selected a total of 17 teams for the Imagine Cup Awards, with six in Artificial Intelligence, six in Big Data and five in Mixed Reality.
“We did our best. We are really looking forward to the results,” said Iqra Irfan, who with partner Areeba Kamil was representing the Fe Amaan start-up. Their third partner was not present on the occasion.
The team of three from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) has made a monitoring device for pregnant women. They have built a belt with the help of Internet of Things sensor device.
With the help of Azure cloud platform, the device can be run remotely and can monitor the health condition of a mother.
“Pakistan has one of the highest child birth fatalities,” said Areeba. Women in rural Pakistan suffer the most as they lose their baby most often along with their own life just because they lack timely health care.
Responding to a question on how the women will use the device as they lack proper education, she said the team was aware of that and planned to make doctors, health-care workers and other stakeholders part of the team.
In case of any abnormal heart movements, this system generates timely alerts so that precautionary measures can be taken immediately.
On the second day, there will be competition among all 49 teams from 33 countries in the Imagine Cup finals. About 1.8 million students from over 190 countries have participated in the contest since its inception in 2003.
The winning team will receive $85,000 cash prize and $50,000 Azure grant. - The Express Tribune
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