A team composed of computer engineering students from Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP) was recently declared champion in the national finals of Imagine Cup 2018.
Team Onyx battled four other teams for the title of national champion, P50,000-cash prize, and the chance to represent the Philippines in the Imagine Cup regional finals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The group created a mobile application called Bionyx that scans and analyzes fingernails and helps individuals easily identify diseases related to the liver, heart, lungs, and the blood.
The students said Bionyx was built on the idea that fingernails serve as a visual advertisement to a person’s health. Fingernails could reveal diseases related to the liver, heart, lungs, and blood, they added.
The app aims to become a tool for early diagnosis with captured images analyzed on Microsoft Azure across multiple data sets for accurate and timely analysis.
The members of the victorious team all share a passion for technology. Daniel Soriano, 18, is an active student leader for their program and is an active member of the Institute of Computer Engineers of the Philippines Student Edition – TIP Quezon City Chapter.
Romie Santiago, 20, is currently taking Embedded Systems track, and is adapting knowledge of hardware and software integration projects. Kyle Regino, 19, is also pursuing Embedded Systems track. She is interested in studying how things work, and use that to create new things that could help others.
If Team Onyx hurdles the regional finals, they will advance to the world finals in July 2018. In 2010, a team from the Philippines — By Implication — won the global championship.
At the Imagine Cup, students are asked to create an original technology project from start to finish — from ideation and planning, to building the project and making it an actual product. Any big idea can qualify as an entry, with the only requirement being that the teams must integrate Microsoft Azure into their solutions.
