A group of five students from Makerere University has been awarded at the 2019 Big Ideas Contest after presenting some of the finest health-related ideas at ‘The Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch Day’ that went down on Wednesday, April 24 at UC Berkeley’s Blum Hall. The award ceremony was held last Thursday, May, 2 in California.
Their brilliant idea was dubbed ‘Cloud-based Emergency Response System’ (CERS), a USSD-based mobile application that enables real-time matching of ambulances to patients. This innovation is a brainchild of Moses Kintu (team leader), Joy Martha Bawaya, Jordan Ongwech, Nelson Mandela and Trevor Nagaba, all students of Uganda’s biggest University, Makerere.
“This @MakerereU team just beat out a bunch of @ucalifornia students in the @BigIdeasContest #GlobalHealth prize for its Cloud-based Emergency Response System matching ambulances to patients in Uganda in real time” reads a tweet composed by The Blum Center, an innovation hub based in Berkeley, California.
According to information shared on it’s official web portal, the contest received over 300 pre-proposal applications in November 2018, representing over 1,000 students across 12 campuses. After a preliminary round and a final review, 34 teams were awarded prizes across 8 different categories, with award amounts ranging from $2,000 to $15,000.
The categories in which various universities competed include; Art & Social Change Connected Communities, Energy & Resources. Food System, Global Health, Hardware for Good, Workforce Education & Development as well as Scaling Up Big Ideas.
