Telstra recently hosted a Cloud-based hackathon at the Gurrowa Innovation Labs in Melbourne, where inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs from Melbourne’s tertiary institutions and the local IT community participated in the 48-hour competition.
Seventeen teams participated in the event.
Telstra service creation and design general manager, Barry Ramirez, said the event was the perfect platform for sharing and seeding ideas in digitising health, fitness and wellbeing.
“And through Telstra’s partnership with Microsoft, the array of tech and experience shone through as contestants built real world solutions that truly demonstrated the power of the hackathon as a platform for innovation.
“Over the 48 hours, every team made the leap from blueprints into reality, thanks in part to the coaches from Telstra and Microsoft who brought their energy, expertise and spirit of creation all the way from Egypt, the US, as well as Australia,” he said.
Ramirez mentioned this global reach meant that participants could easily access experts in Cloud, wearables, mobile app development, user experience as well as entrepreneurship.
Team ME+ who took the top spot with an app that brings together the most popular fitness trackers on the market, such as FitBit, Apple Watch and Microsoft Band.
The app unifies the vital statistics gathered with mental and emotional insights captured from the individual to predict which day-to-day actions and decisions made are the true drivers of our mood and productivity.
“With these insights, ME+ connected the digital world with the real one, by using machine learning, calendar and proactive alerts to guide the individual on the best choices for their goals.”
Further across the competition field, the open invitation to redefine reality saw some impressive visions come to life, such as ultrasonic walking sticks for the visually impaired, machine learning algorithms which automatically detect the type of exercise being performed, and even apps which detect blood pressure with a simple wearable device and smartphone.
“Many of us often wonder about how the reality we desire can be transformed into the reality that we live in.
“And while this journey is often about tenacity and persistence, sometimes, it just takes the right mix of time, knowledge and tools to breathe life into our ideas and start us on the path toward version 1.0,” Ramirez added.
