The DigiInventors Challenge 2021
The DigiInventors Challenge is an annual competition, organised by the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, for teams of school-age students to develop ideas to encourage young people to keep active, staying healthy and happy now and in the future. 2021 saw the fifth competition run, with significantly expanded scope, taking in teams from the United Arab Emirates as well as teams from Scotland, supported by Heriot-Watt University through its Dubai campus.
The challenge asked teams of 3-4 students, supported by at least one adult mentor, to identify health and care challenges that they face on a daily basis (it could be friends or family living with diabetes, asthma, Alzheimer's, or something completely different) and asks them to come up with a digital idea that could potentially be transformed into a real digital solution.
From the initial submissions, a shortlist of 4 finalists from each country went forward to participate in a 2-day bootcamp, supported by the Glasgow Warriors, one of Scotland’s two professional rugby union clubs. The bootcamp provided information and coaching from a range of experts about digital health and care, entrepreneurship, business, and technical skills.
The teams then went forward to deliver live virtual presentations to a judging panel at the end of November 2021, with the winning teams from Scotland and the UAE going forward to work with partner organisations (the Scottish Tech Army in Scotland and Okadoc in the UAE) to develop a prototype of the solution they had proposed. The Scottish Tech Army was represented on the judging panel and the standard of presentations was consistently high. After review of the final presentations, the two winning teams were from Marr College in Troon, Scotland and the Pristine School in Dubai, UAE.
The winning entry from Marr College was for an app called You Wish We Assist, inspired by a friend of the team members that has mental health challenges and finds it difficult to open up to discuss them, leaving her frustrated and isolated, issues that were further exacerbated by COVID-related lockdowns. The team carried out detailed research to validate the scale of the problem and came up with ideas for an app that would both help with tracking mood and encouraging relaxation and provide a means to contact experts that could provide support as people felt they needed it. The team had also taken into consideration aspects such as equity and accessibility of the app, marketing, how users would be supported and a business model for the app.
The Scottish Tech Army is working with the team to develop a wireframe prototype of the app that can help them take their idea to the next stage. The team will present their idea and the prototype of the app at a showcase event at the end of January 2022 as part of Expo 2020 Dubai. We are excited to be working with the team from Marr College and wish them every success in the showcase presentation.