Five university undergraduates with app ideas aimed at healthcare education and improving patients’ lives are heading into the final stages of technology company Kainos’ annual innovation challenge, AppCamp, to develop and launch their apps on the Apple App Store.
The Kainos summer AppCamp provides young developers and entrepreneurs with an opportunity to conceive and develop their own innovative mobile apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
In an effort to advance to the final stages of the competition, 11 ‘AppCampers’ pitched their app ideas to a panel of experts that included Brendan O’Brien, consultant public heath doctor with the Public Health Agency; Paul McCoy, investment manager at Invest NI; and Tom Gray, Kainos’ chief technology officer.
The students with the most innovative app ideas have been selected to return to Kainos for the remainder of the summer to polish and launch their apps on the Apple App Store.
The finalists are Alison Campbell, from University of Ulster (Coleraine), and Paul Acheson, Cormac Quinn, Andrew Paul and Sean Mackin, all from Queen’s University Belfast.
They will develop apps for people with diabetes (Beta-Betes), early onset dementia (Memory Manager) and cystic fibrosis (CF Buddy and Acystant), as well as educating and alerting travellers of the necessary vaccination information for regions worldwide (Vacci-Nations).
“We’re delighted with both the calibre of students that this year’s AppCamp has attracted and the quality of the ideas that they have generated,” said Gray. “We’re confident that the apps will provide real and tangible benefits.”
Following six weeks of development and testing, the students will release their apps and compete for the chance to be crowned winner of this year’s competition based on a range of criteria, including number of downloads and reviews.
The apps are expected to be released in September and the winner, who will take away the latest Apple devices, will be announced towards the end of the year.
Kainos’ summer AppCamp’s finalists are (left to right) Paul Acheson, Cormac Quinn, Alison Campbell, Andrew Paul and Sean Mackin