Manipal students win MIT COVID-19 challenge

Students of Manipal Institute of Technology have won the Massachusetts Institute of Technology COVID-19 challenge event - 'Beat the Pandemic'. The 48-hour long virtual event saw participants form teams to shortlist the problems and generate solutions.

Three students of Manipal Institute of Technology - Akshatha Kamath (3rd year CSE), Shubham Rateria (CCE Batch of 19’) and Adri Rajaraman (ECE Batch of 19’) - participated in the event and pitched their idea in the initial session. They teamed up with Melia Watson, Washington DC (Respiratory therapist, MBA), Hsiang Wei Hu, Taiwan (co-founder of Acusense Biomed) and Mariane Melo, UK (MD).

They narrowed down to the problem of overcrowded hospitals with inappropriate admissions, whereas less than 5% of the average population under 50 years of age requires hospitalisation. Their solution was to build a Tele Health platform for non-contact monitoring of vital signs, such as heart rate, respiratory rate and blood oxygen concentration using just a phone camera, or webcam at home.

Over the weekend, they worked on the proof of concept, prototypes and preliminary vision for execution. Throughout the event, several mentors across the US with diverse expertise were available to improve the idea and business proposal.

The team then reconvened to present their work in the form of a three minute pitch followed by a Q and A session with the judges.

The event saw 1,500 participants from 75-odd countries and more than 250 mentors. The team were declared as winners of their Track - ‘who to test and when’.

They will now have an opportunity to co-develop and implement their solution with the support of partners. The team looks forward to improve the accuracy of their solution and incorporate it into Tele-medicine platforms.