The World Championship finals of the 2021 Imagine Cup took place during last week's BUILD. Read on to find out who won - or watch the video and judge for yourself. 

Student teams from around the globe used to come together in an exciting trip to one of Microsoft's facilities in a massive jamboree that was the Imagine Cup Finals. Somehow I don't think that format is likely to return - but something that will carry on going from strength to strength is the quality of the students projects.

For 2021 the Imagine Cup became an all-digital challenge but it still attracted tens of thousands of students from 163 countries. We reported on the results of the World Finals a couple of months ago when the winners of each of the four categories, Earth, Education, Health, and Lifestyle, were revealed, each team winning USD $10,000 plus Azure credits. All that was left was to chose between these four to select the overall Imagine Cup Wold Champions, who would claim the top prize of prize of $75,000 and mentorship with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella. This took place, via video links, during Build with each of the four teams presenting a 3-minute pitch to three expert judges and answering their questions.

And the winning team is ......  Team REWEBA from Kenya
whose project in the Health category was an IoT-based early warning system for babies that remotely monitors key parameters such as weight during regular post-natal screening and sends measurements to doctors remotely, allowing for immediate interventions that can save infants from fatal diseases, thus reducing infant mortality rates.

Team member 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.”

This seems to be a great implementation using IoT that can have a real impact in parts of the world where infant mortality is high.

Students who are interested in participating in the Imagine Cup 2022 should register on the Imagine Cup website and begin dreaming up their ideas. 

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