Microsoft’s annual Imagine Cup, a global competition of high-tech student projects, reached its culmination this week accompanied by the usual pomp at the company’s headquarters in Redmond. The winner of the $100,000 grand prize[1] and 365 days of bragging rights is X.GLU, a Czech team that created a custom smart glucose meter for children with diabetes.
Hundreds of teams competed worldwide, and 54 were selected as finalists, presenting their projects in Redmond. That was further reduced to a final 4, who presented to Macklemore, of all people, and a panel of expert judges. (Strangely the finals ceremony wasn’t held, as it was last year[2], at the high school he and I both went to.)
The device is thinner than any glucose meter available now, has no buttons or interface to fiddle with, and can be customized like a smartphone with colored or printed cases. It’s controlled entirely from a smartphone app, and powered by an NFC connection — the disposable blood analysis strip doesn’t actually need any power, so only a little is used to transmit the small amount of data it produces.
Marek Novak, the 22-year-old hardware designer for the team, made it all using off-the-shelf parts to keep prices down. The other team members, Tomas Pikous and Barbora Suchanova, put together the cloud-based infrastructure that allows caregivers or emergency contacts to see the kid’s glucose levels or get alerts if, say, the kid doesn’t test on time.
In addition to the $100K, the team gets a one on one mentoring session with CEO Satya Nadella, $125K in credit on Azure services, and tickets to next year’s Build conference. Congrats to X.GLU for an innovative project taking on a serious problem....