Accenture has announced the winners of the Accenture Innovation Challenge 2018, a competition in India that aims to inspire students to apply their technology talent and creativity to develop innovative ideas that can create social and business impact. The grand prize was awarded to the team from Sir M. Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology (Sir MVIT), Bengaluru for their solution ‘Aayush’, a cost-effective ingestible battery-less electronic health pill that can continuously record health metrics to predict and prevent heart attacks and cardiac arrests.
Other winners in the competition included teams from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras; Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, Bengaluru; IIT-Kharagpur; Manav Rachna International Institute for Research and Studies, Faridabad; and Delhi Technological University, New Delhi. The winners were announced at the competition’s grand finale held recently in Bengaluru, which featured 16 finalists, all of them from the engineering discipline.
The Accenture Innovation Challenge 2018 was open to students pursuing graduate, under-graduate and post-graduate programs. Students were encouraged to develop ingenious technology solutions using advanced technologies such as advanced analytics, automation, artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, cybersecurity, immersive reality and internet of things, among others.
“We are thrilled that the Accenture Innovation Challenge this year has seen a record participation – over 13,000 entries involving over 30,000 students across 1,000+ colleges in India. Technology innovation is driving disruption in many industries, and it is exciting to see how students have applied advanced technologies to develop innovative ideas in diverse areas such as medical care, trauma care, dairy farming, energy management, music, railroad management, personal data privacy, fraud management, eco construction, and so on”, said, Mohan Sekhar, senior managing director and lead for Accenture’s Advanced Technology Centers in India. “The innovative and creative abilities these students have exhibited are commendable and we heartily congratulate all the winners and participants”.
The five awards and their winners are:
Grand Prize: Awarded to the team from Sir M. Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology, Bengaluru for ‘Aayush’, a cost-effective ingestible battery-less electronic health pill to predict and prevent heart attacks and sudden cardiac arrests. ‘Aayush’ records metrics such as PH level, body temperature, heart rate and myeloperoxidase protein content of a person using bio-medical sensors from the body and transmits data to a mobile app via a wearable smart patch. The solution features a built-in artificial intelligence-enabled virtual assistant, which monitors data for abnormal variations in the parameters, and analyzes and predicts a heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest 9 – 11 minutes prior to it taking place. In cases of an emergency, the solution uses GPS location to alert the nearest hospital and the person’s family or caretaker group about the need for immediate medical care.
* ‘Innovate for Businesses’ category award: Won by the team from IIT-Madras, for their solution ‘Microwave Pyrolysis’, which can convert waste into energy through microwave pyrolysis, an age-old technique of thermal decomposition that converts non-metal waste into forms of energy including oil, gas, and char, which have multiple uses and can be incorporated into existing product supply chains.
* ‘Innovate for the Society’ category award: Won by the team from Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, for developing ‘EyeSee’, a solution which features a virtual reality (VR) app and headset to simulate the commonly used Humphrey field analyzer tool to carry out glaucoma detection tests. The solution is more affordable and portable to use, making it more feasible to use among people in rural and inaccessible areas.
* Jury’s Choice award: The jury named two teams as winners of this category:
‘MusicManiac’, developed by students from IIT-Kharagpur is a system that automatically chooses chords to accompany a vocal melody using melody extraction and Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) files, thereby giving novice musicians the opportunity to automatically create music and experiment with chord patterns without any professional knowledge of music.
‘Virtual Exposure Therapy’ (VET), is a solution jointly developed by students from Manav Rachna International Institute for Research and Studies, Faridabad and Delhi Technological University, New Delhi. VET is a solution that aims to treat people with phobias and post-traumatic disorders in a virtual reality environment, by recreating trauma relevant scenarios, providing analysis and monitoring improvement of the patient’s psychological condition.
* Employees’ Choice award: The winner of this award was chosen through voting by employees of Accenture’s Advanced Technology Centers in India. This award was won by the team from IIT-Madras, for developing ‘Artemis’, a robot that can detect and analyze cracks in railway tracks using ultrasound technology and IoT. Some key features of this fully automated method include storing the location of cracks, sending alerts on identified cracks to mobile phones, detecting loose fish plates and surveying for anomalies on tracks. The solution aims to address the problem of train derailments in India, which cause massive loss of life and property every year.
The Grand Prize winner received prizes worth INR 150,000 and each member of the two teams selected as category winners — for ‘Innovate for Businesses’ and ‘Innovate for the Society’ — received prizes worth INR 75,000.
The winners for the Accenture Innovation Challenge 2018 were chosen from among 16 shortlisted teams that presented their ideas to a jury panel featuring Anupam Sinha, Co-founder and CEO – Vxceed; Daniel Raj David, CEO and Co-Founder – Detect Technologies; Hari Bharadwaj, Founder and CEO – eSahai; Manish Singh, Senior Director of Product Mobile and Internet – Ola (ANI Technologies); Dr. M. Vijayalakshmi, Professor and Vice Principal – Vivekanand Education Society's Institute of Technology (VESIT), Mumbai; Sunil Rao, Partner, Business Services – Lightspeed Ventures Partners; Sunit Singh, Partner and Co-Founder – Design Capital; and Thomas Dal, Director and Dean – Strate School of Design.
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