Winners to compete for place in worldwide finals to be held in New York City

Four Maltese university students have developed a technology based project aimed at reducing the number of child victims of HIV in developing countries, and to help children already living with HIV get the necessary treatment to reduce the chances of illness and mortality. This project won the 2011 Edition of the Microsoft Imagine Cup local competition. This competition is run in various countries around the world with the final winners competing for a chance to attend and participate in the worldwide finals due to be held in New York this year.

David Borg, Brendan Cutajar, Rachel Gauci and Glenn Zarb, Team Four-for-All, were mentored by Kristian Guillaumier to design and develop this project.

Fiorella Ellul Sullivan, Academic Program Manager at Microsoft Malta, asked the students what had prompted them to develop such a project. “Five out of every six children born with HIV in resource-limited countries die before their second birthday. Mother-to-child transmission of HIV can be prevented with the use of antiretroviral drugs taken during pregnancy and labour. Children with HIV can live a relatively normal life when receiving antiretroviral treatment,” explained Rachel Gauci the team leader of Team Four-for-All.

The team members went on to explain how their project addresses such issues. “Made up of two main components, a web portal named LittleRedRibbon.org and a Windows Phone 7 application named LittleRedRibbon Mobile, this project strives to make two vital resources available in developing countries, namely monetary funds for purchasing antiretroviral drugs, which are crucial both for the prevention and treatment of HIV in children, and the availability of professional and up-to-date expertise regarding paediatric infectious diseases. Working seamlessly together to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, these two components help to realise two of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals − reducing child mortality, and combating widespread diseases.”

This application offers features such as offline access to detailed and medical profiles, the ability to search, edit and update patient profiles, offline access to a catalogue of all the medications that are available in the region where the clinical examinations are being performed, and the ability to view suggestions regarding possible treatment options provided by medical practitioners on the LittleRedRibbon website. The system also has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface that makes it easy for different user groups to find a way to help in the fight against HIV. “We are speaking of a system where, practically, medical practitioners can donate their knowledge.”

LittleRedRibbon.org provides detailed medical profiles of every child and mother-to-be, including details such as birth, immunization, development and drug history, so that medical practitioners can give the best advice possible, access to an online forum, through which medical practitioners can easily express their professional suggestions to the health care workers that are actually in contact with these children and women. The website also makes available as many as three different and flexible ways in which users can contribute monetary donations.

The system also offers the possibility for effecting general donations of any amount, which go towards the purchase of ARV drugs. The Save a Life Scheme, through which the user can give a one-time donation to fund the purchase of ARV drugs for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. On the other hand, through the Fund a Better Future Scheme, the user can sponsor a child living with HIV by funding the purchase of the medications required for his/her treatment for six months, one year or two years. After becoming a sponsor, the user can view the child’s profile and also communicate with the child via the LittleRedRibbon messaging system. Any messages sent are synced to LittleRedRibbon mobile. When updating the child’s profile, the health care worker can pass on the messages and reply on behalf of the child.

Every month, all received donations are forwarded to humanitarian organisations, which are responsible for buying all the necessary drugs. These organisations are also responsible for the verification of health care workers registering on LittleRedRibbon.org.

The economic viability of this project was also an important factor in winning this competition. The team explained how income would be coming from a small percentage from all received donations, ad-space for companies involved in the production, exportation and selling of anti-retroviral drugs, sponsorships of funds from drug companies and AdSense earnings from advertisements displayed on the website. “At the end of the financial year, after making sure that we have enough monetary assets to cover the maintenance expenses for the following few months, we plan on using the excess income over expenditure to purchase ARV drugs and donate them to the Little Red Ribbon project itself,” concluded the Four-for-All team members.

The competition judges, who included Gareth Gauci from ICON, Claudine Cassar from Alert, James Bonello from Crimsonwing, and Francois Grech from Exigy and Godwin Caruana from MITA, were impressed and had words of praise for all the participants. “These students have shown great potential. Their attitude and willingness to learn and participate in such events make them ideal members in one’s team, both at school as well as at the work place. These may be tomorrow’s high-achieving employees. We were also very impressed by their energy and enthusiasm, which surely augurs well to seeing these students become budding entrepreneurs of the future. It was very interesting for us to see how students planned to solve complex societal problems using Microsoft based technology. As in previous years, the quality of the winning team was exceptionally good and progressing to the finals is recognition of their hard work and technical abilities of next generation IT professionals.”

Referring to the technologies used in the implementation of this project, the team explained the amalgamation of various frameworks namely .NET Framework 4, ASP.NET MVC3 Framework, WCF Framework, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to SQL, IIS7, SQL Server 2008 R2, Windows Phone 7 Application Platform, PayPal NVP API, Google Maps API and JavaScript language, jQuery library and AJAX technologies.

“We are very proud to reward and expose the good work of Maltese students. The project developed by Team Four-for-All is a very good example of how innovation and technology go hand in hand to address global issues, “ said Fiorella Ellul Sullivan on behalf of Microsoft Malta. “Whilst we congratulate these students for their great work, we wish them the best of luck for the global competition.”