International Health Sciences University (IHSU), on Wednesday awarded it best students and innovators at the inaugural IHSU-ICT Awards Gala Night held at Protea hotel Kampala.
The event recognized exceptional students in the ICT-Health Leadership programme and marked the launch of the Lift256 Incubation Programme. This particular part of the programme was designed in 2014 to respond to unemployment challenges of graduates with the support from Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and CM 2000.
The programme saw students organise themselves into groups where they could develop software applications (apps), which they pitched to would-be funders. Four teams pitched their projects namely; The Health Data Harvester, The Data Aggregator, The Tele-consult Platform and The ICU-Communicator.
After a tight competition, the judges ruled ICU-Communicator, the winner due to their applicability. The winners took up $10,000 (about Shs 350,000,000) to support the three-member team to scale their project to the next level.
The ICU-Communicator app is designed to solve the issue of the lack of intensivists (people keen to work in the Intensive Care Unit) in Uganda. The platform will initially focus on lab results that the intensivists can review and relay to provide appropriate guidance to health workers in the ICU.
Speaking after the win, Lorna Twinomugisha of ICU-Communicator said the money would help the team get more specialists like programmers and business analysts on board.
Michael Niyitegeka, the programme consultant, said the programme is built to move student’s minds away from studying for exams.
“We enhance the technical skills and competence by exposing students to different tools to make them better technology people,” he said.
The IHSU University Council Chairman Dr Moses Galukande said education ought to be geared towards providing solutions.
barangasam@gmail.com