The 19th annual Imagine Cup brought together thousands of students from 163 countries across the globe reimagining tech solutions to impact their communities. With projects submitted in four social good categories – Earth, Education, Healthcare, and Lifestyle – the competition advanced through Online Semifinals and World Finals rounds. As winners of each category, the top four teams were selected to pitch their projects at the World Championship during Microsoft Build for the chance to take home the 2021 trophy.
Congratulations to Team REWEBA from Kenya, who won the grand prize for their IoT-based infant monitoring solution, which remotely analyzes infant parameters during post-natal screening and serves as an early warning intervention system. The team won USD75,000, a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and a USD50,000 Microsoft Azure Grant.
The 2021 World Championship was judged by Jocelyn Jackson, Enhao Li, and Toni Townes-Whitley - innovation and industry experts spanning a variety of technology, diversity, start-up, and social impact backgrounds that align to the core of Imagine Cup’s mission. Hosts Tiernan Madorno, Microsoft Business Program Manager, and Donovan Brown, Microsoft Partner Program Manager, kicked off the show, introducing each of the judges tasked with selecting the World Champion. The top four teams then gave an in-depth presentation on their solutions, which were assessed for their technology, diversity, originality, and innovative design. Watch the show to experience the moment when Team REWEBA is crowned champion!
Meet the 2021 World Champion
Team REWEBA, Kenya – Healthcare category
After meeting at the United States International University in Kenya, the team started working together on a graduate project aimed at solving a major problem within their community. Members of the team had interned at a local hospital, learning first-hand the challenges that mothers can face traveling long distances for infant screenings. Lack of healthcare access in marginalized communities, compounded by the effects of COVID-19, contributes to a high infant mortality rate. Team member Khushi Gupta says, “Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest under-5 mortality rate in the world. We can solve this problem using REWEBA, a remote infant monitoring system that can be used in marginalized areas thus giving everyone equal access to healthcare." They realized how beneficial it could be to apply IoT to create a remote monitoring solution, and their project was born.
REWEBA (Remote Well Baby) is an early warning system that digitally monitors babies’ growth and health parameters and sends them to doctors for timely intervention. It combines Machine Learning, IoT, Analytics, and more to provide innovative functionalities for infant screening, mimicking the process of post-natal screening in a hospital. Team member Jeet Gohil shared that “There’s a lot of technologies that we came to discover {through building our project}, for example Azure DevOps, IoT, and Functions. We learned a lot about how to build IoT systems.”
Kushi Gupta stated the driving factor for the team’s solution was enabling equal access to healthcare services and saving infants from fatal diseases: “Africa has the highest number of {infant mortalities}, highlighting the gap in healthcare services. REWEBA is the only remote healthcare solution that provides regular growth monitoring for infants from the comfort of the home, while also giving direct access to doctors for immediate intervention.”
Looking to the future, Team REWEBA hope to enhance and scale their project to include additional infant screening factors and a postnatal screening device for mothers. The team would like to launch a start-up in Kenya to enable even better access to healthcare services in marginalized areas. When asked how winning the 2021 Imagine Cup will impact their project, the team responded, “The winning prize and the Azure grants will take our project up a notch, and we envision saving millions of babies’ lives all around Kenya. We plan to extend throughout Africa and India as well, as these are the countries where infant mortality is really high.”
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